As I previously announced, I’ll be leading a workshop at RailsConf 2015 called Getting a Handle on Legacy Code.

Since the workshop is only 90 minutes long, I don’t want to use too much time for setup. Following Eileen Uchitelle’s lead, here are the instructions for getting set up for the workshop in advance.

If you’re new to Ruby and don’t know how to do any of the following, don’t worry about it. We’ll be doing some mob programming and pair/small group work, so you can join up with someone who’s got everything set up. If you’re more experienced, I’d really appreciate it if you could take the time to get set up so that you can help the newer people.

  1. Make sure you have a Ruby development environment and your favorite text editor/IDE installed. Ruby 2.x is best.

  2. Fork and/or clone the starter repository on GitHub with git clone git@github.com:CodingZeal/gilded-rose-railsconf2015.git

  3. Run bundle install to get all of the necessary gems installed.

  4. Install any other gems you like for doing basic Ruby development. The Gemfile in this repo installs the gems I’ll be talking about, but you may want some others.

  5. Run rake test, rake spec, and rake flog to make sure everything is working.

Let me know or file an issue if you run into any problems with these instructions.

If you want to “cheat”, feel free to try working through the exercise ahead of time.

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you at RailsConf!