Auto-install system dependencies for Ruby on Rails

Let's integrate Homebrew into our Ruby on Rails Project local set up.

There is a convention for Ruby on Rails projects to use bin/setup to set up and install/update required dependencies. But by default, it does not include system dependencies.

We are going to use the Homebrew Bundle tool for this.

First, we need to have a Brewfile with:

# Redis - For ActionCable support (and Sidekiq, caching, etc.)
brew "redis"

# PostgreSQL - brew install postgresql
brew "postgresql"

# Overmind (requires tmux)
brew "tmux"
brew "overmind"

# Imagemagick or libvips - for processing images (avatars, file uploads, etc.)
brew "vips"

# Yarn - for installing Javascript dependencies
brew "yarn"

Then, in bin/setup, we are going to add:

puts "== Installing system dependencies =="
if system('[[ (-x "$(command -v brew)") ]]') # Is Homebrew available?
  system("brew bundle check --no-lock --no-upgrade") || system!("brew bundle --no-upgrade --no-lock") # install if there are missed dependencies
end

I prefer to add it in the beginning before installing other dependencies.

These will help new onboarding set up development with one command only. Reduces the number of instructions from README.

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Paul Keen is an Open Source Contributor and a Chief Technology Officer at JetThoughts. Follow him on LinkedIn or GitHub.

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