lizainslie/rail-overflow

A Stack Overflow clone written in Ruby

RailOverflow

RailOverflow (we're looking for a better name) is a self-hosted, open-source alternative to StackOverflow.

Ruby version

RailOverflow requires Ruby 2.7.0. The easiest way to use this is by using our Vagrantfile or using a service like Heroku

System dependencies

You must have Postgresql installed to use this application. Install it on Ubuntu with:

$ sudo apt install postgresql

Configuration

You must install all Ruby and JavaScript dependencies before running any database migrations and before running the web app. To do this, we use Bundler and Yarn. (click on the links to see install instructions for each) Once you have Bundler and Yarn, run these two commands in the app directory.

$ bundle install
$ yarn install

Database creation

To create the necessary production database, run:

$ sudo -u postgres createdb railoverflow_production

Note: If you are not running in production, substitute the word production for your Rails environment. (development or test)

Database initialization

To initialize the database, you will have to migrate it. No population is needed.

To migrate the database, run:

$ RAILS_ENV=production rake db:migrate

Deployment instructions

Heroku

Manual Deploy

Run it yourself, like this:

$ export PORT=3000 # can be any port you want, just make sure it is open and accessible to the user that will be running the application
$ export MODE="production" # can also be "development" or "test"
$ bundle exec puma -t 5:5 -p $PORT -e $MODE

Note: The -t 5:5 argument we sent to the bundle exec puma command represents the number of worker threads puma will spawn. You can set this to something else based on your system, but remember these two things:

• The more threads you create, the faster your application will run, but it will also use more memory.
• Every system has a maximum amount of threads it can run at once. Be mindful of this as it will error if you somehow go over.

Credits and License

Credits:

• The logo was made by JustMrRobBoss#2020 on Discord, here is his Discord server.

License:

This application is licensed under the permissive MIT license.