JLDrill Requirements

Important Note:

Version 0.3.0 does not have an easy to use installer. This is planned for version 0.4.0. I apologize for this, but unfortunately functionality issues had priority for the current version. Installation is complicated at the present time, but not necessarily difficult. If you have problems, feel free to contact me and I will try to help.

What to Install

JLDrill is written in Ruby and uses GTK2 as it’s GUI toolkit. You will need to install the following before installing JLDrill.

JLDrill has been developed and tested on GNU/Linux (Ubuntu). It should work on any platform that supports Ruby, Gtk and Ruby-Gnome (including Windows and Apple-Macintosh).

Installing the Requirements

Windows

The installation of the requirements for Windows is not very complicated. Unfortunately they are rather large downloads and install a lot of things that you won’t need just to run JLDrill. In a future release I will create a streamlined installer that includes only the things you need.

You will probably want to install Ruby using the One Click Ruby Installer. This is very convenient because it also installs rubygems and puts everything in your path.

Once that is installed, you will need to install GTK2 and Ruby-Gnome2. Detailed instructions on doing this are available on the Ruby-Gnome2 site. Again, the installation is rather simple and it installs the GTK2 libraries at the same time as the ruby-gnome libraries.

You are now finished installing the requirements. Please see the Download/Install section for details on obtaining and installing JLDrill.

GNU/Linux, BSD, Unix-like, etc

The easiest way to install the prerequisites is to find the packages for your distribution. I have tested everything with the packages available from Debian and Ubuntu (Hardy Heron).

Note: The Debian and Ubuntu package for rubygems puts the gems in /var/lib/gems/1.8. In order to be able to run JLDrill you need to add /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin in your path. I have added 

export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin
export RUBYOPT=rubygems
to the end of my .bashrc file.

If you’d rather roll your own solution for installation, You can find Ruby at the main Ruby website. Please note: The gnome-gtk bindings do not work with Ruby 1.9. You will have to install Ruby 1.8.

Now you need to install RubyGems. You can find documentation on doing that at the RubyGems website.

GTK+ 2.6 can be obtained at the GTK+ website

Finally, you will want to follow the Ruby-Gnome2 install guides

Please see the Download/Install section for details on obtaining and installing JLDrill

Mac OSX

Unfortunately I don’t have access to a Macintosh. Installation of GTK+ and ruby-gnome is difficult and requires a developer level of knowledge. If there is anyone with OSX who wants to work on an easy way to install this, please contact me.

The difficulty of getting this running on OSX has caused me to consider choosing a different widget library for JLDrill. It is possible I will change in the near future.

Developers

For people who wish to contribute to the development of JLDrill, I recommend installing the following ruby gems. This will allow you to run the tests and build the website.

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