System Requirements
OpenBrewComp requires familiarity with Ruby on Rails, UNIX system administration, and, if you will be contributing to the project, git. While it is possible to run Rails applications under MS Windows, no known attempt has yet been made to run OpenBrewComp on such a system. Development work has, so far, been limited to Linux and Mac OS X while deployment has only been done on Linux.
While you do not need to be a Ruby on Rails guru to configure and deploy OpenBrewComp, you should be familiar with the basics of configuring and deploying a Rails app.
Because OpenBrewComp is a web-based system, the client side of the system will work in any modern, JavaScript-enabled, graphical browser. Some parts of the system are known to not work with JavaScript disabled or when using a text-based browser. The original requirements of the system did not require it to work under such conditions so minimal effort was spent addressing such environments.
Software Requirements
OpenBrewComp requires the following software on the server host:
- Ruby 1.8.6 (not tested with 1.8.7, 1.9, JRuby, or any other non-MRI implementation)
- Ruby on Rails 2.3.x
- A database supported by Ruby on Rails. OpenBrewComp has been tested with PostgreSQL 8.3.7, MySQL 5.0.77, and SQLite 3.6.11.
-
A working LaTeX installation (for the generation of PDFs) such as the one provided by TeXLive, although any modern TeX system should work. OpenBrewComp has successfully used TeXLive and teTeX.
The following LaTeX packages are used and must be installed prior to attempting to generate PDF output:
array,booktabs,colortbl,epic,geometry,graphicx,inputenc,longtable,multicol,pifont, andtextpos. - A Ruby on Rails application server. This demo, for example, is running on Phusion Passenger.
Several gems and plugins are also required. The required plugins are included in
the distribution and the gems can be easily installed. Run rake gems
to see the list of gems and sudo rake gems:install to install any
missing gems.