---
title: "Ruby and Rails"
category: "Languages and runtimes"
tagline: "The Ruby language and the Rails web framework, installed with mise and kept up to date."
source: "mise"
command: "rails"
website: "https://rubyonrails.org/"
code: "https://github.com/rails/rails"
links:
  - name: "Ruby"
    url: "https://www.ruby-lang.org/"
  - name: "Rails Guides"
    url: "https://guides.rubyonrails.org/"
---

## What it is

Ruby is a programming language designed to be pleasant to read and write. Rails, or Ruby on Rails, is a web framework built on it: it gives a new web app a database layer, routing, templates and tests from the start, and favors sensible conventions over configuration. GitHub, Shopify and Basecamp were built with it.

Ruby libraries are called gems; Bundler installs the ones a project needs from its `Gemfile`.

## Why it's here

- **Fast to build web apps.** `rails new` gives you a working app in minutes.
- **Batteries included.** Database migrations, background jobs, mail and tests are part of the framework.
- **Ruby itself.** A good language for scripts and automation, too.

## On CoreDesktop

CoreDesktop installs Ruby with [mise](/software/mise/) rather than pacman: it installs the latest Ruby and makes it your default (`mise use -g ruby@latest`), then installs the Bundler and Rails gems. Each `update` updates mise, moves you to the newest Ruby, and runs `gem update` to update your gems, Rails included.

Start a new app with:

```
rails new myapp
```