In my search for an authorization/access control list solution for my Ruby needs I came across Steffen Bartsch’s “Declarative Authorization” plugin (Github source here). Short aside … the plugin allows for a very DRY approach to managing permission from one configuration file, not to mention that it generates a visualization of your ACL, too. This is a huge benefit when building an app...

I’ve finally gotten to a point where I have been ready to upgrade to Rails 2.0.2 on one of my production machines (running Red Hat Enterprise 5). I ran into a little snag in that when trying to update rails; no error or anything, just a response that Rails 1.2.3 was installed: 123456-bash-3.1$ sudo gem update rails Password: Updating installed gems... Attempting remote update of rails Successfully...

A number of months ago ActiveReload came on the scene with a new application called “Warehouse” which makes for a really aesthetic and functional way of managing repositories in Subversion. The app requires you to install the Ruby Subversion Bindings, and while it may seem quick in the instructions, it wasn’t like that for me installing on RHEL 5. (I’m following through the instructions...