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Creating a New JumpStart App in 2023

In 2022, I built something like 15 or 20 different proof of concept JumpStart apps so you’d think I’d remember how to do this but I just don’t so I thought I’d write it up again.

What is JumpStart?

JumpStart is a Rails application framework which gives you a starting template on which you can build a Rails app. Back in 2020 when I started using JumpStart, I named it my best decision of 2020 and I stand by that. Recommended.

Building a JumpStart App from Scratch

Here are the steps.

  1. Start at the JumpStart Homepage.
  2. Now you want to login.
  3. Select on your license and you’ll get a page of instructions.
  4. (Accept the invitation to join if you didn’t already).
  5. Clone the template into a local repo of your own name.
  6. Change into that directory with cd
  7. Create a git repo server side for what you just cloned down.
  8. Add the origin per JumpStart’s directions.
  9. (This is where I start to add some specific instructions for you that aren’t what JumpStart says). Make a docs directory at the top level of your app: mkdir docs
  10. Create a jumpstart.md file inside docs: touch docs/jumpstart.md
  11. Copy all the text from the set of JumpStart docs you have in front of you into docs/jumpstart.md – you’re going to want to get back to these at some point.
  12. The first thing you’re going to want to do is bundle install
  13. You want to open config/database.yml and customize the name of your database and / or database adapter.
  14. You want to run bin/rails db:create
  15. You want to run bin/rails db:migrate
  16. You want to run the tests: bin/rails test. They will likely fail but let’s try
  17. You want to create the rails JavaScripts: rails javascript:build
  18. You want to create the rails CSS: rails css:build
  19. Run bin/rails test again and if they all pass then you are golden to begin!
  20. If you do this a lot (like me, you may have local customizations that you want to apply to JumpStart here; I do). 20