How to Ruby Debug with Pow

Below are steps I followed to get ruby debugger ruby-debug running with Pow. Based on info from this thread https://github.com/37signals/pow/issues/43 and this blog post http://flochip.com/2011/04/13/running-pow-with-rdebug/

1) Update your Gemfile

Assuming you're writing your app in Ruby 1.9 and using Bundler, just add the dependency to your development gems:

group :development do
  gem 'ruby-debug19', require: 'ruby-debug'
end

2) Update development environment

Add the following to config/environments/development.rb

# Always run remote debugger in development mode.
require 'ruby-debug'
Debugger.start_remote
Debugger.settings[:autoeval] = true
puts "=> Debugger enabled"

3) In terminal connect to RDebug’s server with:

rdebug -c

4) Update your code with debugger interrupt call

def create
  @post = Post.find(params[:post_id])
  debugger
  @comment = @post.comments.create(params[:comment])
  redirect_to post_path(@post)
end

References

• Ruby Debugger gist by Jeff Casimir: https://gist.github.com/1094309
• Debugging with ruby-debug by Ryan Bates: http://railscasts.com/episodes/54-debugging-with-ruby-debug