Sugar 
Sugar is a modern open-source forum optimized for performance and usability, written in Ruby on Rails.
Dependencies
SQLite is supported, but you probably want PostgreSQL or MySQL for production use.
Installation
If you want to hack on Sugar, the easiest way to get up and running is with sugar-dev-box. It provides a virtual development environment, and only requires VirtualBox and Vagrant.
Otherwise:
$ git clone https://github.com/elektronaut/sugar.git
$ cd sugar
$ bundle
$ rake db:create
$ rake db:migrate
This assumes you have MySQL running on localhost, with a user named rails
with no password. See Configuring Sugar if your setup
differs.
Now you can start Solr and the development server:
$ sunspot-solr start
$ bundle exec rails server
Sugar is now running on localhost:3000.
Deploying Sugar
Sugar is deployed like a regular Rails app, see the
official Rails site. A sample Capistrano
recipe is provided config/deploy.rb.dist.
For production use, you'll want a full grown Solr setup. See the Sunspot documentation for guides on how to get up and running.
Heroku is currently not supported.
Configuring Sugar
Most of Sugar is configured with a web interface. However, a few details must be sorted out before the app starts. The defaults should be fine for development, but you need tweak these settings for production use with environment variables.
| Environment variable | Required | Info |
|---|---|---|
| SUGAR_SECRET_KEY_BASE | Yes | Set to a long, random string |
| SUGAR_SECRET_TOKEN | - | Use if you are upgrading from Rails 3 |
| SUGAR_SESSION_KEY | - | Default: _sugar_session |
| SUGAR_DB | - | Database backend. Default: mysql, also valid: postgresql, sqlite |
| SUGAR_DB_DATABASE | - | Default: sugar_<%= Rails.env %> |
| SUGAR_DB_HOST | - | Default: localhost |
| SUGAR_DB_USERNAME | - | Default: rails |
| SUGAR_DB_PASSWORD | - | Default: rails for PostgreSQL, blank for MySQL |
Credits
Thanks to the members of the B3S community for feedback, ideas and encouragement, names far too many to be mentioned. Napkin was written by Branden Hall of Automata Studios.
License
Copyright (c) 2008 Inge Jørgensen
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.