fredschoeneman's posterous

Growl style images for autotest-notification using Ubuntu 10.04

For anyone working through Michael Hartl's Railstutorial using Rails 3, and Ubuntu 10.04, and who wants to use autotest-notification, these instructions should work.  They are essentially a copy of the installation instructions put up by Carlos Brando, except tailored to make the notifications look more like OSX's Growl:

1) Install libnotify:

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin
2) Then install autotest-notification to your global gemset for the ruby interpreter you're using.  In the example below, I'm using 1.8.7 but you could just as easily be using 1.9.2:

rvm use 1.8.7@global
gem install autotest-notification
an-install

3) Now switch back to your default ruby interpreter and gemset: 

rvm default
or, if you haven't set a default interpreter and gemset, you can first create a gemset using:

rvm gemset create railstutorial
and then set those defaults using:

rvm use 1.8.7@railstutorial --default
4) Now navigate to the image directory where your gems are stored.  Mine is here:
~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p299@contractango/gems/autotest-notification-2.2.1/images
and replace the stock images with images below:

(download)

Also, if these instructions are unclear to you please do let me know in the comments below, so that I can clarify them.  And since the instructions may change as the gem matures, if all else fails, I refer you again to Carlos Brando's instructions, which should work just fine.

 

UPDATE:  These steps work fine for Ubuntu 10.10, but not for 11.04 Natty Narwhal unless you are using Ruby 1.8.7.  Using 1.9.2-p180 or 1.9.2-p136 with Natty Narwhal causes autotest to hang.  Here's a copy of the bug report.  For now, you should either stay with Ubuntu 10.04 or Ubuntu 10.10 if you want to use Ruby 1.9.2, or be content with using 1.8.7 with 11.04.  Also, please let me know in the comments if you are able to find a work around.  Thanks!

UPDATE II: If you're having trouble with autotest hanging on Natty Narwhal, consider updating your linux kernel using the following instructions, as I did:  http://ubuntuguide.net/ubuntu-11-04-upgrade-linux-kernel-to-2-6-39-0