I'm a Richardson, RU? » ruby

Wirble Woes: “Couldn’t load Wirble: no such file to load”

imarichardson — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 16:36:48 +0000

Recently, I decided to use Wirble to customize my console experience. I kept running into the following error after installing the gem:

1
2
3
4

$ script/console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.5)
Couldn't load Wirble: no such file to load -- wirble
>>

The README wasn’t able to help much, as it only mentioned adding the Ruby path to the start of the ~/.irbrc file. The solution was to add a require ‘rubygems’ to the ~/.irbrc. Although the error didn’t mention it the problem was that wirble couldn’t load because rubygems were instantiated.
Here’s my current ~/.irbrc with the update:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

$LOAD_PATH << File.expand_path('~/.ruby')
begin
# load wirble
require 'rubygems'
require 'wirble'

# start wirble (with color)
Wirble.init
Wirble.colorize
rescue LoadError => err
warn "Couldn't load Wirble: #{err}"
end

Using Declarative Association with HABTM Relationships

imarichardson — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 17:10:01 +0000

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 that has a number of different security roles. Additionally, it allows access control on the controller, model, query, and view levels. From the site:

Plugin features

Authorization at controller action level

Authorization helpers for Views

Authorization at model level

Authorize CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) activities

Query rewriting to automatically only fetch authorized records

I was ecstatic about using the plugin but hit a stump when trying to work it out with my own HABTM association in my Rails app. The third requirements mentions, “User objects need to respond to a method :role_symbols that returns an array of role symbols”. My log error kept displaying:

1
2
3

The use of user.roles is deprecated. Please add a method role_symbols to your User model.
Permission denied: User.roles doesn't return an Array of Symbols ([#])
Filter chain halted as [:filter_access_filter] rendered_or_redirected.

In order to get things to work correctly with a User model, Roles model, and Roles_Users table for the “has_and_belongs_to_many” relationship, you need to make sure you’ve a method in your user model that “correctly” generates a “roles_symbol” array:

Note: Make sure that you use the correct value of the filed in your roles model when serializing. The example used “title” but in my application I used “name” for the column that defined the role.

“sudo gem update rails” doesn’t work

imarichardson — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:04:05 +0000

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:

1
2
3
4
5
6

-bash-3.1$ sudo gem update rails
Password:
Updating installed gems...
Attempting remote update of rails
Successfully installed rails-2.0.2
Gems: [rails] updated

In order to get things working right I had to update the system files so everything would run:

1
2
3
4
5
6

-bash-3.1$ sudo gem update --system
Updating RubyGems...
Attempting remote update of rubygems-update
Successfully installed rubygems-update-0.9.4
Updating version of RubyGems to 0.9.4
Installing RubyGems 0.9.4

Now running the update works.

1
2
3
4
5
6

-bash-3.1$ sudo gem update -y rails
Updating installed gems...
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Attempting remote update of rails
---------- this is where all the dependencies are updated ------------
Gems: [rails] updated

Installing Subversion Bindings for Warehouse App

imarichardson — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 03:57:08 +0000

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 listed here).

Be warned – you may want to go grab a cup of java and get comfortable, because this is a long one …

First of all I have a problem extracting and installing swig.

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

$ tar xzvf swig-1.3.31.tar.gz
swig-1.3.31/
swig-1.3.31/Doc/
...
swig-1.3.31/Doc/Manual/SWIGDocumentation.pdf

gzip: stdin: unexpected end of file
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Unexpected EOF in archive
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now

I don’t know why it happened and why the file couldn’t extract so instead I went straight to the main sourceforge page (http://sourceforge.net/projects/swig/), download the latest build, and uploaded it to my server. Then follow the instructions using the new filename (for me it was “swig-1.3.32-rc1.tar.gz”).

1
2
3
4
5

$ tar xzvf swig-1.3.32-rc1.tar.gz
$ cd ./swig-1.3.32-rc1
$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

This got me through the ./configure, but during the make I received an error that pointed to a missing “g++”.

1
2
3
4
5
6

./Tools/config/depcomp: line 566: exec: g++: not found
make[2]: *** [Modules/allegrocl.o] Error 127
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/richa088/swig-1.3.32-rc1/Source'
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/richa088/swig-1.3.32-rc1/Source'
make: *** [source] Error 2

I then found out (by way of a 2 hour date with google) that by default RHEL5 doesn’t come with g++ installed. (I’m sure a much seasoned linuxologist would have figured it out quicker, but I digress.) So, using yum:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10

$ sudo yum install gcc-c++
...
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: libstdc++-devel ######################### [1/2]
Installing: gcc-c++ ######################### [2/2]

Installed: gcc-c++.i386 0:4.1.1-52.el5.2
Dependency Installed: libstdc++-devel.i386 0:4.1.1-52.el5.2
Complete!

In order to get the make to pass, I then had to re-run the configure. The make, and install succeeded afterwards.

1
2
3

$ sudo ./configure
$ sudo make
$ sudo make install

But it’s not over yet. For step 2, I ran then tried to run the “make swig-rb” and received another error regarding the Apache Portable Runtime not being installed:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16

============================================
WARNING: skipping the build of mod_dav_svn
--with-apxs or --with-apache must be used
============================================
configure: Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library configuration
checking for APR... no
configure: WARNING: APR not found
The Apache Portable Runtime (APR) library cannot be found.
Please install APR on this system and supply the appropriate
--with-apr option to 'configure'

or

get it with SVN and put it in a subdirectory of this source:
...
configure: error: no suitable apr found

As this post reveals, there is some newness between the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and neon (don’t even ask me to explain) which make for an error in trying to install the bindings (the command “make swig-rb”). So to get by this, I followed the instructions by Josh Goebel at this pastie to get by. ***Note that on line 4 you need to omit the “tar.gz” as I’ve indicated below.

1
2
3
4
5
6

$ cd neon-0.27.1
$ sudo ./configure --with-ssl --with-libs=/usr/local
...
checking for expat.h... no
checking for xml2-config... no
configure: error: no XML parser was found: expat or libxml 2.x required

WOW!!! When it rains it pours … while running the first config for neon, the process stopped because I didn’t have an XML parser on the system. (I’d thought the folks who set it up had done so, but that wasn’t the case.) So I installed expat with:

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11

$ yum install expat-devel
...
(1/1): expat-devel-1.95.8 100% |=========================| 130 kB 00:00
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
Installing: expat-devel ######################### [1/1]

Installed: expat-devel.i386 0:1.95.8-8.2.1
Complete!

And after continuing through the remainder of the pastie, I’ve finally got subversion bindings installed! And now for the moment of truth …

1 2	$ -bash-3.1$ ruby -e 'puts require("svn/core")' true

Eureka! The test passed! Now I’ve got to actually install Warehouse … but I’ll save that for tomorrow. And I won’t even tell you how long it took me to finish all this stuff.

Here’s the complete pastie with my additions (depending on how your admin set things up you may have to sudo each line):

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20

$ sudo yum install expat-devel (if you don't have an XML parser installed)
$ cd /usr/local/src
$ curl -O http://www.webdav.org/neon/neon-0.27.1.tar.gz
$ tar zxvf neon-0.27.1.tar.gz
$ cd neon-0.27.1
$ ./configure --with-ssl --with-libs=/usr/local
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ cd ..
$ curl -O http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-1.4.3.tar.gz
$ curl -O http://subversion.tigris.org/downloads/subversion-deps-1.4.3.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf subversion-1.4.3.tar.gz
$ tar xzvf subversion-deps-1.4.3.tar.gz
$ cd subversion-1.4.3
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local --with-openssl --with-ssl --with-zlib --with-neon=/usr/local
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ make swig-rb
$ make check-swig-rb (Most of these test's should pass)
$ sudo make install-swig-rb