Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

Ruby Build a Todo List Application with Rails 4 Build a Todo List Application with Rails 4 Generate a Rails Application

Anthony Ho
Anthony Ho
10,228 Points

Is it necessary to install Virtual machine to develop on Rails?

The Treebook course didn't use the VM

Maciej Sitko
Maciej Sitko
16,164 Points

It is not necessary but it is more professional to use VM. Thats because by using VM you set up the whole development environments which is easier to deploy after you finish the project. One of the most popular VM software is now Vagrant,which is an incredible tool.

There are a couple of alternatives to VM that can serve a similar purpose , like Docker.io which is a packaging tool that sets up a current package/database box setting and easily deploys it. You can package there a wide variety of different configs that consist of database, framework, drivers, packages and encapsulate them to set it up oin the server in future without the necessity to install everything manually everytime you want to deploy something, as setting up environments takes some time. Docker.io is linux dedicated by nature while VMs usually allow you to put any system you want there.

2 Answers

Kevin Naegele
Kevin Naegele
10,868 Points

I have started building with out using a virtual box, and have no issues. I have had set backs by not having some software install like homebrew.