The Need for bin/start

Introduction

Getting started with a new project should be as simple as possible, even for someone who is not technical. As a maintainer, you must make sure that anyone can clone your project and get it up and running in a few minutes.

After you clone a project, you should follow two steps:

1. Setup
2. Start

In this example, the project is a web application, but it works for other projects too.

Setup

You should have a small bash script called bin/setup in every project. You could use Ruby opens a new window for the script if that’s what you prefer.

Rails opens a new window has had a bin/setup since 2014 opens a new window and so should your project! This is the default ./bin/setup opens a new window in a Rails application.

Thoughtbot opens a new window wrote a great article about their bin/setup convention: ./bin/setup opens a new window

At OmbuLabs opens a new window , one of our latest bin/setup scripts looks like this:

In order for our script to work, you must have a .env.sample file that has some default values for your .env file. Every project you start must have a .env file with environment configuration. Why? Read here opens a new window

We use Ruby opens a new window for our setup script because all of our development environments have been setup with this script: OmbuLabs Setup opens a new window

If you are using Rails, starting an application is simple:

But, what if you want to use something else? Let’s say you want to use Sinatra opens a new window with Shotgun opens a new window . Then you would need to start the server like this:

If you are using Bundler opens a new window , then you would need to run it like this:

bundle exec shotgun config.ru

What if you want to use Foreman opens a new window ?

You get the point. There are way too many ways to start a web application. We need to standardize this into something flexible like ./bin/start.

One of our latest bin/start scripts looks like this:

From now on, all the web applications that we build at OmbuLabs opens a new window will be able to get started like this:

It won’t matter if we use Foreman, Sinatra, Cuba opens a new window , Rails, Shotgun, or whatever. bin/start will know how to get the application started in a development environment.

Why

I love how simple it can be to tell anyone to clone the project and run these steps:

cd path/to/project
./bin/setup
./bin/start

A web designer that has no experience with Ruby/Rails can setup and start a web application in a few minutes.

I’m a big fan of Convention over Configuration opens a new window . Also, I hate it when it takes me half a day to setup a new application in my environment. It should never take more than a few minutes.