How to Quickly Set Up a Rails Development Environment

For an even faster method, see the end of the article.

Approach

First, start a temporary Ruby container to create the project, and then build the necessary development image.

Create a New Project

To create a Rails project, start a temporary Ruby container:

$ docker run -it -v $(pwd):/app -w /app ruby:3.2 bash

Install the Rails gem inside the container:

/app# gem install rails

Then create the project:

/app# rails new myapp --database=postgresql --css=sass --skip-bundle

Here, we use the --skip-bundle parameter because this is just a temporary container. We will run bundle in the development container later. Now, the temporary container has served its purpose. Exit the container by pressing ctrl-d or typing exit.

Add a Dockerfile

Add a Dockerfile in the project directory with the following content:

FROM ruby:3.2

# Reset this environment variable set by the Ruby image to its default value
ENV BUNDLE_APP_CONFIG=.bundle

# Uncomment this section if you need to install other dependencies
# RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y --no-install-recommends \
#    nodejs \
#    npm \
#    postgresql-client

WORKDIR /app

This is a minimal Rails development environment image. If needed, you can install other system dependencies using apt-get. We don't need to build the image yet; we will build it later using the docker compose command.

Add docker-compose.yml
Add a docker-compose.yml file in the project directory with the following content:

version: "3.9"

services:
  web:
    build: .
    command: bin/rails server -b 0.0.0.0
    volumes:
      - .:/app
    ports:
      - 3000:3000
    depends_on:
      - postgres
  postgres:
    image: postgres:13
    environment:
      POSTGRES_PASSWORD: postgres

This defines the web and postgres services. The web service will build an image based on the Dockerfile in the current directory, mount the current directory to the /app directory inside the container, expose port 3000, and add a dependency on the postgres service. The postgres service will use the postgres image and set the initial password via an environment variable.

Build the Image

Run the following command:

$ docker compose build

Docker Compose will read the configuration in docker-compose.yml and build the respective images. Note: you need to re-run this command every time you modify the Dockerfile.

Enter the Command Line

Run the following command:

$ docker compose run web bash

This will start the web service container and open a bash shell. In this shell, you can run the commands needed for local development, such as bundle install, bin/rails g, etc. All subsequent operations that need to be executed inside the container will be done through this shell.

Run Bundle

First, run the following command inside the container:

/app# bundle config set --local path vendor/bundle

This command sets the bundle installation directory to the vendor/bundle directory under the project. This way, every time you update the Gemfile during development, you won't need to rebuild the image.

Then run bundle:

/app# bundle install

Note: remember to add vendor/bundle to .gitignore.

Prepare the Database

Before creating the database, modify the database settings of the Rails project. In the Docker Compose environment, PostgreSQL and the Rails process run in different containers, similar to different hosts, where the service name is their respective network name.

Modify database.yml to add the following content in the development and test sections:

  host: postgres
  username: postgres
  password: postgres

Then run the following command:

/app# bin/setup

This will create the respective databases.

Start the Web Service

After the preparation, it's time to start the web service. Open another terminal and run the following command:

$ docker compose up

Once the startup is complete, open http://localhost:3000 to see the Rails welcome page.

An Even Simpler Way

Download ServBay
ServBay is an all-in-one development environment management tool that supports multiple development languages and database components, including PHP, Node.js, MariaDB (MySQL), PostgreSQL, as well as NoSQL databases like Redis and Memcached.

To set up a Redis environment, simply download the Redis package in ServBay, and all configurations will be completed in just 3 minutes.