How do I install Decidim?

Step by step

We're starting with an Ubuntu 16.05 LTS.

Installing rbenv

First we're going to install rbenv, for managing various ruby versions. We're following the guide from DigitalOcean.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y build-essential autoconf bison build-essential libssl-dev libyaml-dev libreadline6-dev zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm3 libgdbm-dev
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build
rbenv install 2.3.1
rbenv global 2.3.1
echo "gem: --no-document" > ~/.gemrc
gem install bundler

Installing PostgreSQL

Now we're going to install PostgreSQL for the database:

sudo apt-get install -y postgresql libpq-dev
sudo su - postgres 
psql 
> CREATE USER decidim_app WITH CREATEROLE SUPERUSER CREATEDB; 
> \password decidim_app

You need to enter a password (two times) and save it somewhere to configure it later with the application.

Installing Decidim

Next, we need to install the decidim gem:

gem install decidim

Afterwards, we can create an application with the nice decidim executable:

decidim decidim_application
cd decidim_application
bundle install

Configure the database

For configuring the database you need to put the config/database.yml

Initializing your app for local development

We should now setup your database:

bin/rails db:create db:migrate db:seed

This will also create some default data so you can start testing the app:

A Decidim::System::Admin with email [email protected] and password decidim123456, to log in at /system.
A Decidim::Organization named Decidim Staging. You probably want to change its name and hostname to match your needs.
A Decidim::User acting as an admin for the organization, with email [email protected] and password decidim123456.
A Decidim::User that also belongs to the organization but it's a regular user, with email [email protected] and password decidim123456.

This data won't be created in production environments, if you still want to do it, run:

SEED=true rails db:setup

You can now start your server!

bin/rails s

Visit http://localhost:3000 to see your app running. 🎉 🎉

Manual installation