Motiro is developed and tested more often on some flavours of Linux -- specially Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Gentoo. These probably should be the best available systems to host Motiro, but it has been tested and seems to work pretty well on top of Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X.

If you manage to test Motiro on another platform or happen to find any problem with those listed above, we we'll be happy to receive your bug report.

Strawberries or chocolate?

Motiro is available for download in two main flavours: Ruby Gem and good old tarball (tar.gz). Each one of the solutions works as well as the other one and both are very easy to install, but ease is a very subjective matter that depends on what you prefer and know. So you are better of choosing for yourself.

The Gem will solve most dependencies automatically and will probably demand less effort to set up, but will install some libraries into your system that may be a little harder to remove in the future (nothing impossible, though). If you like to have greater control over what is inside your system, maybe you will want to use the tarball. It has few dependencies and everything is placed inside a single directory instead of spread across your system.

You will need...

Motiro is written in Ruby and, in order to run it, you will need the Ruby interpreter 1.8.5 or later. Development is mainly based on version 1.8.5, therefore that should be the most stable one, but any later one should work.

For the default installation, in addition to the Ruby interpreter, you will also need other freely available software. The programs labelled (tar) will only need to be installed manually if you choose to install from the tarball. When using the Gem installation these dependencies will be solved automatically for you, but those with no label need to be installed by everyone.

• SQLite 3
• Subversion command line client (svn) (only if you will be using a Subversion repository)
• Darcs command line client (darcs) (only if you will be using a Darcs repository)
• (tar) POpen4 0.1.1
• (tar) SQLite3-Ruby 1.2.1

You should be able to obtain all those requirements by following the links. But if you are running a Linux distribution, you may want to check your distro's repositories for the tools. For instance, in case you have a Debian system, installing the Subversion client should be as easy as

$ aptitude install subversion

The exact command may be a little different, but it should be possible to find a similar one for most Linux distros. The last two items (that will only be needed when using the tarbal) can be installed on any operating system through Ruby Gems:

$ gem install mediacloth
$ gem install daemons

After making sure your system has all those requirements, you may proceed with the installation. Choose your installation method and proceed to the appropriate section.

Installing the Gem

In order to install the Gem and have your own local Motiro, you will only need two commands:

$ gem install motiro --include-dependencies
$ motiro install <somewhere in your system>

This will automatically download Motiro together with any library dependencies that may be needed and install it. While running the first command, you may be asked to choose the version for some Gems. Just select one that happens to be compatible with your platform.

After that, Motiro will be installed in your chosen place and you can make as many copies as you want to. Just repeat the command motiro install for different locations.

After the second command, you will be told the local port number that Motiro chose to run on. If you don't mind pointing your favourite browser to http://localhost:<port>, you will be able to enjoy your Motiro right away. To activate the reporter that collects information from your source-code repository, proceed to the section Making it work for you.

Installing the tarball

After double-checking if you have all the requirements, the next step needed to install from a tarball is downloading the file. As soon as you get your hands on the archived package, choose an appropriate location in your system and unpack Motiro.

That is all you need. You will only need to run one command to finally see your Motiro running and try to edit some pages:

$ ruby script/server

This will start a web server on port 3000. From now on, you just need to point your preferred browser to http://localhost:3000 and enjoy your installation. After testing if everything is in place, you will most probably want to make Motiro show news from your project's source code repository.

Making it work for you

Motiro comes pre-configured to its own development needs because we actually use it to keep track of our progress. Seriously.

This may be satisfactory if you are interested in watching us work. But most people want to keep track of their own project, their own team.

To customize Motiro to your needs, you will need to edit the configuration file config/motiro.yml. For example, suppose you are trying to keep an eye on the development of the Ruby on Rails framework. You can make Motiro look at their Subversion repository by changing the repo line to

repo: http://dev.rubyonrails.org/svn/rails

All you need to do is change the Motiro repository address for yours.

Starting the job scheduler

Motiro uses an independent daemon that runs on background to update the information from the revision control repository. In order to start and stop the daemon, you can use the script script/ticker.

To start the scheduler, try going where you installed Motiro and saying

% ruby script/ticker start

Analogously, to stop it, you do

% ruby script/ticker stop

On Windows platforms, you are better off starting the scheduler with

% ruby script/ticker run

and stopping it by hitting Ctrl-C.

After a few minutes the reporter will have finished his job and the latest code revisions will be available on your Motiro.

Alternative environment

The installation procedures outlined above will use one of two Ruby web servers (either WeBrick or Mongrel, depending on your set up). It is also possible to run Motiro with other web servers. In order to use Apache, for example, refer to the page RunningUnderApache.

The default installation uses SQLite series 3.x, but it is theoretically possible to use any database system supported by Rails. In case you want to use MySQL, take a look at the page UsingMySQLAsDataBackend.

Troubleshooting

These installation instructions should work for most cases. If you are blessed with an error message during the process, there is no need to pull your hair out (not yet). There are solutions for some common gotchas on this page.

If you can't manage to find a solution for your issue on this site, there is always the mailing list.