Skud/Nitrous.io

What is it?
A hosted virtual machine where you can develop Rails apps such as Growstuff. It's free for open source projects.

How to set up and run Growstuff on nitrous.io

 * Sign up for an account on http://nitrous.io/
 * Set up a Ruby box, giving it any name you like
 * In the terminal window (bottom of screen), do:

git clone https://github.com/YOURNAME/growstuff.git cd growstuff rvm install ruby-1.9.3-p194 rvm gemset use ruby-1.9.3-p194@growstuffdev --create bundle install rake db:setup rake

Then run:

unicorn

Then click on "Preview" and choose port 8080. Growstuff should open in another browser tab.

Editing
To view the Growstuff source, click the "refresh" button in the IDE panel to the right, and navigate to eg. growstuff/app/views/home/index.html.haml and edit in a HELLO WORLD message to yourself. Save the file. Reload your "preview" in the browser.

You can also edit files from the terminal. Maximise the terminal (upper right corner of terminal panel) and then "vim app/views/home/index.html.haml" or whatever you like.

Collaboration
Add collaborators through the "collaborators" menu item. Then click "Collab mode" on your box to allow those collaborators to access it. There's also a chat screen (right hand panel of the default screen layout).

Benefits

 * Quick setup (~20 mins from start to end, most of it in "bundle install" and running the test suite)
 * Free for open source projects
 * Easily show anyone your work in progress
 * Built-in "collab mode" (i.e. pair programming)

Limitations

 * Can't develop offline.
 * Need reasonable bandwidth.
 * Limited IDE/text editor choices: web IDE, or terminal-based (eg. vim)

Other stuff
Set up your SSH key (for Heroku or Github) as described here: http://help.nitrous.io/ssh-add/ -- BE SURE TO USE A PASSPHRASE as any collaborators you add can use this key.