Ruby on Rails project creation

Creating a new Rails 4 project.

Check that the .gitignore_global file contains the files you want ignored.
Create the skeleton of a new Rails app

user@desktop:~$ mkdir project
user@desktop:~$ cd project

Import the .gitignore: For Rails, use this one from Github, below. Then initialise the repo:

user@desktop:~/project$ git init
user@desktop:~/project$ git add .
user@desktop:~/project$ rails new . --git --database=postgresql --skip-test-unit

Modify the Gemspec file to refer to RSpec in the test evironment:

gem 'rails', '4.0.2'
gem 'pg'
gem 'sass-rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'uglifier', '>= 1.3.0'
gem 'coffee-rails', '~> 4.0.0'
gem 'jquery-rails'
gem 'turbolinks'
gem 'jbuilder', '~> 1.2'
group :doc do
  gem 'sdoc', require: false
end

group :development do
  gem 'capistrano', '~> 3.0'
  gem 'capistrano-rails', '~> 1.1'
  gem 'capistrano-bundler','>= 1.1.0'
  gem 'capistrano-rvm'
end

group :development, :test do
  gem "rspec-rails"
end

group :test do
  gem "factory_girl_rails"
  gem "cucumber-rails", :require => false
  gem "capybara"
  gem "database_cleaner"
  gem "launchy"
end

then install the bundle and RSpec-Rails support:

user@desktop:~/project$ bundle install
user@desktop:~/project$ rails generate rspec:install

Create the database user for this project (development and test on the local machine)

user@desktop:~$ sudo -u postgres psql
postgres=# create role projectdbuser with createdb login password 'projectdbpassword';

Edit config/database.yml to include the passwords for the development and test databases. Add host: localhost lines for the development and test databases.
Create and migrate the database

user@desktop:~/project$ rake db:setup
user@desktop:~/project$ rake db:migrate

When running tests, migrate the test database (if necessary) and then run the tests:

user@desktop:~/project$ rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV=test
user@desktop:~/project$ rake spec

Github's .gitignore file

*.rbc
*.sassc
.sass-cache
capybara-*.html
.rspec
/log
/tmp
/db/*.sqlite3
/db/*.sqlite3-journal
/public/system
/coverage/
/spec/tmp
**.orig
rerun.txt
pickle-email-*.html
config/initializers/secret_token.rb
config/secrets.yml

## Environment normalisation:
/.bundle
/vendor/bundle

# these should all be checked in to normalise the environment:
# Gemfile.lock, .ruby-version, .ruby-gemset 

# unless supporting rvm < 1.11.0 or doing something fancy, ignore this:
.rvmrc

## Github's global gitignore for Ruby
*.gem
*.rbc
/.config
/coverage/
/InstalledFiles
/pkg/
/spec/reports/
/test/tmp/
/test/version_tmp/
/tmp/

## Documentation cache and generated files:
/.yardoc/
/_yardoc/
/doc/
/rdoc/

## Environment normalisation:
/.bundle/
/lib/bundler/man/

# for a library or gem, you might want to ignore these files since the code is
# intended to run in multiple environments; otherwise, check them in:
# Gemfile.lock
# .ruby-version
# .ruby-gemset

# unless supporting rvm < 1.11.0 or doing something fancy, ignore this:
.rvmrc

Github's .gitignore file

See also