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 Installing a Ruby Development Environment Installing a Ruby Development Environment Installing the Treehouse VM on Windows

Whats the purpose of this lesson?

I am not getting into my head on why would someone install a VM and then install rails in that box when he can do the same with his local box.

I am trying to understand the necessity of this lesson here?.

2 Answers

Jason Seifer
STAFF
Jason Seifer
Treehouse Guest Teacher

Tony DiMaggio is correct! There's also an additional reason -- rails can be really hard to install. That doesn't mean it is hard to install every time but it can be. There's thousands of different possible system configurations and sometimes things go wrong that can be really hard to troubleshoot. The VM doesn't usually have any issues since everything is already installed. For this reason, we decided to create the Treehouse VM.

Most likely to create an isolated environment from your local box. I'm not familar with Rails but I'm sure there are certain path and variable settings required that might interfere with the regular use of your local box. Think of it as a dedicated sandbox to do your development in.