Installation is actually a problem with Rails, and web app development as a whole.
Think about PHP: Drop files in the web server directory, add a database and user, edit the app configuration file to point to said database and user, and you're done.
Then there's Rails apps. Gitolite is actually fairly typical: Install a ton of packages (including ssh, redis, and postfix daemons which need to be secured), compile your own Ruby (and keep it up to date), install the Bundler gem, configure Gitlab, configure Gitlab shell, configure Unicorn, configure the database, install gems with bundler, bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production (I have no idea what this does), install an init script, update your rc.d, then set up an nginx reverse proxy [1].
If you're used to setting up web apps, this is typical, and very well-described by the provided instructions. If you're used to the PHP experience, or you've only ever installed distro-packaged apps with apt-get or equivalent, this process feels really unreasonably long and painful.
I remember that the Discourse folks said that they were aware that installation was a pain point, and they were working on making it easier.
Lowering the barriers to installation is actually something that web applications written in Ruby/Python/Node.js really need to do in order to begin to compete with PHP solutions among more casual administrators.
A big part of the problem is isolation from the system package manager. I have a Redmine install on the same server as Gitolite, which I manage via apt-get. I'd really like to have a version of the Gitlab instructions that keeps non-system packages (like the self-compiled Ruby) self-contained in /home/git, so they don't break anything else.
The person who has to install some third party web application is mainly concerned with “how easy is this to install”.
Not only have I steered clear of installing things with too many alien prerequisites, I’m often writing in PHP only because deployment is just so much easier.
In another comment i mentioned installing apache, php, mysql and configuring all that as an ancient way that i was able to tolerate years ago, but not nowadays and not for a quick, single-user installation.
Nowadays you can easily have a webapp configure it self. I don't expect more then install/unpack, run, open browser, configure (in the browser), done! And the configure step shouldn't be much more then a) set up admin password and b) point so some database. And if i only want to evaluate or only want a single-user installation i don't want to install MySQL, i am fine with SQLite or HSQL or some other database that comes with the package.
Downloading a .tar.gz, unpacking to /var/www, editing apache config, editing htaccess, editing some config.php, restarting apache, continuing configuration in browser, installing a mailserver to send mails (wtf) is a rather common way i have seen in the PHP world. Gitlab just happened to make it even worse with post-install fixing known bugs/behaviour that should've been working out of the box.
Of course there are good examples and bad examples in each of those, it's surely not tied to the programming language that is used.
Think about PHP: Drop files in the web server directory, add a database and user, edit the app configuration file to point to said database and user, and you're done.
Then there's Rails apps. Gitolite is actually fairly typical: Install a ton of packages (including ssh, redis, and postfix daemons which need to be secured), compile your own Ruby (and keep it up to date), install the Bundler gem, configure Gitlab, configure Gitlab shell, configure Unicorn, configure the database, install gems with bundler, bundle exec rake gitlab:setup RAILS_ENV=production (I have no idea what this does), install an init script, update your rc.d, then set up an nginx reverse proxy [1].
If you're used to setting up web apps, this is typical, and very well-described by the provided instructions. If you're used to the PHP experience, or you've only ever installed distro-packaged apps with apt-get or equivalent, this process feels really unreasonably long and painful.
I remember that the Discourse folks said that they were aware that installation was a pain point, and they were working on making it easier.
Lowering the barriers to installation is actually something that web applications written in Ruby/Python/Node.js really need to do in order to begin to compete with PHP solutions among more casual administrators.
A big part of the problem is isolation from the system package manager. I have a Redmine install on the same server as Gitolite, which I manage via apt-get. I'd really like to have a version of the Gitlab instructions that keeps non-system packages (like the self-compiled Ruby) self-contained in /home/git, so they don't break anything else.
[1] https://github.com/gitlabhq/gitlabhq/blob/5-0-stable/doc/ins...