rstat.us

rstat.us is a microblogging site built on top of the ostatus protocol.

Helping out with rstat.us

If you'd like to contribute, here are some details:

• The stack: ruby/sinatra/mongodb
• The code
• The documentation (need lots of improvement here!)
• The Issues list
• Please fork the project and make a pull request
  • Pull requests will not be merged without tests/documentation
    • We use minitest/capybara for tests
    • We use docco (rocc) for documentation
    • If you think it doesn't need a test, make your case, I'm just saying.

Setting up a dev environment

First off: you will need MongoDB (www.mongodb.org). They have a quickstart guide for getting it installed and running.

Then do:

$ git clone https://github.com/$MY_GITHUB_USERNAME/rstat.us.git
$ cd rstat.us

Copy the config file; if you have actual Twitter API keys, you can add yours, but this file just needs to exist for the server to work.

$ cp config.yml.sample config.yml

Then update your gemset:

$ gem install bundler && bundle install

And start the server:

$ rackup

Bam! Visit http://localhost:9292/ in your browser, and you'll be good.

Compiling CSS and Javascript

For performance reasons, we're currently compressing our stylesheets and javascripts, as well as embedding what images we can. To compile Coffeescript (.coffee) or Sassy CSS (.scss) files for the site to use, use the following rake task:

$ rake assets:compile

Note: This relies on some sort of coffee compiler being installed globally. If you get "undefined method 'compile' for nil:NilClass", that might be your problem. On Ubuntu, installing the nodejs package fixes this; for other systems, check out nodejs.org.

Running your own node

If you need help with this, then you're not ready to run one. Eventually, we plan on making this super easy, but until we feel that it's ready, we're keeping the instructions 'secret.' Sorry!