Rick Olson announcing that Warehouse is now open-source. Damn, it HAS to be Christmas! I have always loved the products that Active Reload builds, mostly because they follow the “do more with less” and “keep it simple stupid” principles, but also because their web-applications look awesome, thanks to Justin Palmer, the self-taught and self-proclaimed Design Ninja (I’ll have to agree with him on this one).

I have always wanted to give Warehouse a spin on my projects (professional and personal), but never got around to buy it because I was afraid it could be of no use for me (you guys have to find a way to distribute trials or something). Now that it’s open-source, I am going to try and provide a guide on how to install it.

Step 1. Requirements

Since I don’t have a spare computer lying around, I’m going to create a virtual machine to accomplish the task. I’ll try to build a dedicated SVN server, using Ubuntu Server (you can use anything else that’s Debian based) so all the dependencies will be installed using apt-get Please take note that this is not a solution to be used in a production environment. It is most suited for “evaluation” purposes.

As for what virtualization software is concerned, there are several options:

• Windows:
  1. VirtualBox (free, as in beer or open-source)
  2. VMWare Server (free, as in beer)
  3. VMWare Workstation (commercial, starts at $189.00)
  4. Microsoft Virtual PC (free, as in beer, has a few quirks with Linux as guest)
• Linux:
  1. VirtualBox (free, as in beer or open-source)
  2. VMWare Server (free, as in beer)
• Mac OS X:
  1. VirtualBox (free, as in beer or open-source)
  2. VMWare Fusion (commercial, starts at $79.99, well worth the money, ahem…)
  3. Parallels Desktop (commercial, starts at $79.99)

So, go ahead and pick one, create a new virtual machine and install Ubuntu Server on that (any of these virtualization solutions can mount an ISO image, which you will have to download from Ubuntu’s website). I chose svnserver for the server hostname, and developer for the default username.

Step 2. Creating the user

Next we need to create a user for our Warehouse installation. The following commands create the warehouse user and add it to the www-data group (the same group Apache runs with by default).

Step 3. Getting all the dependencies in place

After creating the user, you’ll have to add a repository so that you can apt-get the Phusion Passenger Apache module. Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and add the following lines in the end:

Afterwards, run the following command in order to update your apt repositories and install all the requirements to run Warehouse:

NB: The Passenger module package might have a bug where the mod_passenger.so is extracted to the root. If that happens, issue the following command:

Install Rails 2.0.2, Rake and Erubis

Create a mysql user and databases for Warehouse:

To add a new user and give it permission to those databases, run these commands inside a mysql shell:

Step 4. Creating first SVN repository and gitting Warehouse

Login as warehouse. First off, we’ll create our first repository that will hold your project. Here’s how to do it:

We’ll assume topsecretproject is your project name. Next, inside your home directory, issue the following commands:

This will checkout the Warehouse code into /home/warehouse/www/. You can also get a tarball, but using this method is easier if you want to stay on the edge (I hear Rick is adding git support into Warehouse). It will also make the directory readable by the www-data group.
Next, we need to configure the database and run the first migration:

Edit database.yml and put in the correct values. After that, head back to /home/warehouse/www/ and run:

Step 5. Creating the Apache virtualhost

Log in again as the developer user, and cd to /etc/apache2/sites-available/. In that directory, create a file named warehouse-site with the following content:

Finally, issue the following commands to enable the site you just configured, remove the default one, activate the rewrite module and restart apache:

Now all you have to do is to open a browser window and type http://<your_virtual_machine_ip>/install in the URL and you’ll be up and running. I recommend, however, that you define the site with a ServerName, so that the sub-domains work properly.

Step 6. Giving your svn server a domain name and accessing it

Edit /etc/apache2/sites-available/warehouse-site and, right after the <VirtualHost> tag, add the following line:

You can change svnserver.dev to whatever you like. Afterwards, add that host to your hosts file. Here’s how to do it in Windows, Linux or Mac OS X. If all goes well, enter the new URL (including /install in the end) in your browser, and you should be seeing something like this:

In doubt, fill the “Absolute path to repository” with the following value:
/home/warehouse/svn/topsecretproject/, where topsecretproject is the repository name you’ve created in step 4. Also, after completing the installation, you might get an URL like http://topsecretproject.svnserver.dev/. In that case, you’ll have to go back to your hosts file and add another entry with that hostname.

Wrapping up

There you have it. Warehouse up and running syncing your first (and empty) repository. To serve it through apache (ie. enable you to make commits outside of the virtual machine), check this tutorial out. I hope this helps you in any way. I would appreciate some feedback, so don’t hesitate to fill that little form bellow.

Thanks and see you next time.