How to: Install Smashing on Ubuntu or Debian

This guide will take you through the steps required in order to get smashing running on a fresh installation of Ubuntu or Debian. This was tested using Ubuntu Server 14.04 LTS, Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Debian Jessie but should also work for other recent Debian and Ubuntu versions including desktop versions.

Installing Smashing

Ruby & NodeJS

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ruby ruby-dev build-essential nodejs

NodeJS is one of the possible Javascript engines required by execjs. You may try using one of the other choices too (untested).

Required gems

sudo gem install smashing bundler

Create Smashing project

mkdir ~/smashing-dashboards && cd ~/smashing-dashboards
smashing new my_sample_dashboard
cd my_sample_dashboard

Go ahead and edit the Gemfile in your new project's folder and run

bundle install

Ubuntu 14.04 note: when you run into the error

Gem::InstallError: public_suffix requires Ruby version >= 2.0. An error occurred while installing public_suffix (2.0.5), and Bundler cannot continue. Make sure that gem install public_suffix -v '2.0.5' succeeds before bundling.

try running bundle install again. public_suffix is a dependency of addressable 2.5+ but we only need addressable 2.3. Thus addressable 2.4.0 will be installed and the error goes away.

Start dashboard

Run smashing start and you should be now be able to view your dashboard at http://localhost:3030 or from extern http://YOUR.SERVER.DNS.NAME:3030