Sharing gems (or any files really) from lubuntu to windows

Continuing from my previous post about developing rails using lubuntu vm as rails server, I need to have access to gem files inside lubuntu from windows for viewing its sources..

At first I tried to use virtual box shared folders to store rbenv/gems files but it cause many problems in ruby or at the very least it result in a very slow performance (especially when gems are loading)

After many many sleepless nights (dramatization) I finally succeed by using samba and sharing the gems via (virtual) network with the following steps..

Developing Rails in Windows using Linux Server

Developing rails/ruby app in windows is painful as many gems aren't compatible or optimized for windows. But windows is OS that I'm most comfortable with.. Linux (ubuntu) lack some tools that I need and I simply hate OSX (stupid keyboard layout and hardware restriction), so I prefer dealing with gem problems rather than changing OS..

But then it occurred to me, why not just use virtual machine with linux for server? And turns out it's pretty neat.. And I think some people are too use windows as main OS so I posted here the step for setting up linux vm for rails..

tcs-ruby: faster ruby for windows

As a rails developer using windows as my development machine I often getting annoyed on how much time needed to start things especially tests.
In case you're wondering why did I use windows instead of other OS-es better suited for ruby like MacOSX/linux it's because I'm comfortable with it and if you're disagree then feel free to stop reading at this point :)

Several days ago I found about this fork of ruby by TheCodeShop which will speed up things quiet significantly, I decided to try it and one of my project unit tests which needed around 45 sec to complete reduced to less than 20 sec.

Installation

This step assume you're using Win7 with pik to manage multiple ruby installation, if you don't have pik yet get it from https://github.com/vertiginous/pik

1. Download one of ruby build from:
   https://github.com/thecodeshop/ruby/wiki/Downloads
   (I'm using winio one)
2. Extract it, for example to C:\Ruby-tcs193
3. Modify Path to use ruby-tcs: go to Control Panel, System, Advanced System Settings, Environment Variables
4. Edit Path in User variables, modify existing Ruby bin path to ruby-tcs bin (C:\Ruby-tcs193)
5. Add new variable RUBYOPT with value: "-rfenix/replace"
6. Next, add it to pik (you can stop here if you didn't use pik, but I recommend it in case you need to switch to standard ruby)
7. open cmd, then enter "pik add [path to ruby-tcs bin]" for example "pik add C:\Ruby-tcs193\bin"
8. Lastly install devkit for it, run "ruby c:\devkit\dk.rb init" then "ruby c:\devkit\dk.rb install"
9. Done :)

Known problems

Heroku commands

heroku commands will raise error because of non existing fenix/replace, to fix simply remove RUBYOPT temporarily by entering "set RUBYOPT="

Standard ruby

same as above because standard ruby didn't use fenix so remove RUBYOPT temporarily

kaspersky conflicting with tortoise svn

kaspersky, settings, exclusions, add:
- rules for the project folder
- trusted application for:
- - ..\system32\searchprotocolhost.exe
- - ..\system32\searchfilterhost.exe
- - ..\tortoisesvn\bin\tsvncache.exe
- - ..\tortoisesvn\bin\tortoiseproc.exe
- - ..\tortoisesvn\bin\tortoisemerge.exe

other possible cause:
win7 bug prior sp1: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/982927/en-us