Re: [BUG?] Rails installation -- first in a series

> > The way that some people actually think that most people in the world
> > have 24-hour Internet connection at the luxury of their home computers
> > definitely disgusts me (sorry).
>
> Of course, not everybody has that luxury. But I don't think its
> unfair to assume that a web developer would have some kind of home
> internet connection. I'm not sure how you could possibly work
> efficiently and easily without one.

I agree on "efficiently and easily". It's definitely not efficient and
not easy. Although I'd say it's more efficient cost-wise (now don't say
that Internet connection is cheap, no part of the world is the same).

However I can't disagree more on the "possibly" clause. It's definitely
possible. Once you have your development environment set up, there are
LOTS of things you can do offline. (and lots more when online).
Developing an entire CMS is possible offline. Of course, if you want to
do some online stuff, like RSS aggregating or integration with Flickr's
API, you need to be online to test it with the real world. Otherwise,
most of the stuff web developers do is possible to be done without the
Internet. There are server software that can be installed for
development purposes, and some frameworks even include tests, mocks,
and fixtures, to help offline development. Although (maybe) some people
prefer to work with the real database server using the 'production'
environment setting while debugging their apps, it's their choice.

This is not saying that I don't like online development (or more
accurately, development while being connected to the Internet,
regardless whether the Internet is in use or not). But just to say that
I don't like using/installing/developing something that "mandates"
Internet connection just to install it in the first place (not to
deploy it, which is obviously necessary). Rails is not such an app, but
it looks like such an app and I definitely think so because I had to
install Ruby first then run 'gem install rails' on a computer that's
not even my development computer!

All I ask would be just some clearness in the download page, come on it
may be hard to give these three options:
1. download a (currently) broken rails-x.x.x.tgz package and you're
set!
2. gem install rails (which requires Ruby + gem installed on the
downloading computer)
3. download a .tgz/.zip containing rails-x-x-x.gem and all required
gems (or, alternatively, just give direct links to each of the required
gems so I can just select these and click "FlashGot selection")
4. (optional, but really helpful + I recommend highly) download a .zip
file containing the Rails API, Rails HOWTO, Rails WIKI, Rails docs and
whatever you want to put there so it makes the world more like heaven
for unlucky people like me. (some may want to say just "gem rdoc --all"
or "rails doc:rails" but this doesn't work in my case, but this will be
my "bug" report in the next series, coming soon in theaters in your
city)

But...

The 3rd option will make life easier for poor people like me.

The 4th option will make life even easier for people like me and for
some others, too. Even if I have 24/7 Internet connection, why would I
connect to the Internet when I can browse all docs offline, and I can
search blindingly fast after installing something like Google Desktop?


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