I've released the first version (version 0.5) of the Flash Rails project. I should note that this is a stable release. It will not be a 1.0 version until I add all the features I want.

I've been a long time user of Instant Rails, but I've always been aggravated that it took up too much space and was a hassle to just run a simple ruby script. I liked having something portable, though. With the change from MySQL to Sqlite in the new Rails, I saw a great opportunity to strip out some unnecessary baggage.

I started with just the bare ruby interpreter, installed rubygems, rails, and mongrel, and added my own little script ( written in Ruby, and called from a batch file ) to make it portable. This takes up about 50MB, as opposed to the 170MB for Instant Rails, and it's pure Ruby.

The usage is simple. There are two batch files. One for updating the configuration when ever the path to Flash Rails changes, and then one batch file that opens a Command Prompt with all the ruby and ruby-related tools available.

I've also included a Lite version which includes ONLY the Ruby interpreter and my script to make it portable. There are also a few dlls that are necessary in case you want to install rubygems and rails. I could have taken them out, but then you would have to find them yourself, and they only take up 3MB.

This also leaves nothing behind on your system. Everything is contained and kept in the directory you extract the files to. So if you delete that directory, all traces of Flash Rails is gone from that system.

Here is a quick rundown of how to get a rails application up and running:

1. Download and extract Flash Rails Standard.

2. Run the update_path batch file.
You only need to run this once after the path
to the Flash Rails extracted folder changes.

3. Run the use_ruby batch file.
This will open up a command prompt for you.
You must always open a prompt this way if you
want to use ruby. This also dumps you
straight into the ruby_apps folder.

4. type and run 'rails appname'

5. change into the apps folder with 'cd appname'

6. type and run 'rake db:migrate'
This creates the sqlite database, no knowledge
of sqlite required.

7. type and run 'mongrel_rails start'

8. open your web browser to http://localhost:3000

And there you have it!

You can extract the files anywhere you want. Spaces in the folder names in the path to Flash Rails is not a problem.

Enjoy my little project and ask any questions in the forum!