Codenvy Setup

Codenvy is the recommended and fastest way to get started: entirely browser-based, so works on any computer, even inexpensive Chromebooks. We have tested this on connections as slow as 256 Kbps (2G cellular data).

The free account is sufficient for doing course homeworks and developing small projects, but you will still need to deploy to Heroku.

Codenvy Initial Setup

0. Create and login to a free account on Codenvy and complete the profile (for role select student). (Pro tip: if you don't already have a free account on GitHub, create that first, since you'll need one anyway, and you can then use your existing GitHub account credentials to login to Codenvy.)

1. Click "Create workspace" and use the following options for your new workspace:

   • Workspace name - anything you like
   • Team is personal
   • Select Stack (Quick Start): Rails (last item on list)
   • Leave RAM as default
   • Then click Create.

2. From now on, use this same image for all assignments (don't create a new workspace per assignment).

3. Finally, setup a public ssh keypair in your Codenvy instance and add those keys to GitHub. Note: if the "clip" command to copy the SSH key to your clipboard in Step 4 of the GitHub instructions fails for you, then do this:

   cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub
   

   This displays the contents of the file on the terminal. You can then select and copy the entire content starting from "ssh-rsa" including the key up to "your_email@example.com".

4. to check that you can install the correct version of Rails you can run:

   $ gem install rails -v 4.2.10
   

Now you're all set up with Codenvy you can leave your workspace alone until you need to work on an assignment.