acts_as

Today I found the following blog post from a site that has a few interesting rails-casts:
http://blog.edgecase.com/2009/6/2/a-rant-about-testing

It got me thinking about my feelings on testing in general. Yes, I'll raise my hand, I'm totally not the best person to talk to for being thorough with my testing. Honestly, I'm just not drawn to it. The way I learn new technologies and develop software is very much reactionary to a personal drive to do or build a given thing. Something in my head tells me that I need to drive a certain thing into the ground, and then I just do. Unfortunately, testing doesn't seem to get first billing with that drive. I have to say though, once I get into it I can in fact make good thorough tests and they inevitably save me later. Its just getting that kick-start to go down the road of testing is the tough part.

My worst flaw by far, though, is that while I may test a feature and ensure that it works how I intended it, I don't necessarily create a "Test" for that feature. What I mean by this is that someone who is not me, can't just run a test script to re-do my method of testing, and see if any changes have broken things. If i could get into that habit in general, whether it be at integration or lower, I'd probably be way better off when i start making some serious Rails applications. That or I need to find me a Testing Monkey. Someone who, for whatever reason, doesn't want to build things, but instead wants to break things.

Yeah I think i really need to go the route of a test monkey, that's the ticket....

Getting a rails app working on Site5. After reading a bunch of confusing stuff and going down a lot of dead ends i finally figured out four simple things to getting a rails app running on site5.

Essentially its this:

1. Get the ability to install local gems, with this nice thread.
2. Make an .htaccess file with the only contents being "PassengerEnabled on" in it.
3. Setup the .htaccess file in 'public_html' to follow symlinks
4. Setup a symlink from where your app sits in your account, to a place in 'public_html'

Ok so that list is far from a tutorial but if you want to figure out the symlink stuff go here. I'd ignore the stuff in that thread that doesn't talk about making the symbolic links work, since the Phusion Passenger deployment of rails is far simpler to get a rails app running. Another helpful page is the scripting and development page on site5's wiki as well (though at the time I'm writing this I feel its slightly confusing for a newbie).