Fixed. The port was actually "rb-rubygems", not "rubygems".
I'm no rails fanboy by far, but it's unfair to claim that rails is a hard environment to use when in reality rails goes out of its way to make RoR development dead simple.
I'm no ruby developer so I decided to push your example a little further just to see how trivial it really is.
Unfortunately the next instruction you offer didn't work either:
powerbook.local 105> sudo gem install rails
Password:
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find rails (> 0) in any repository
A little googling reveals that at least on OSX, you need to do this:
But then the next command you wrote blows up again:
powerbook.local 110> ./script/server
Cannot find gem for Rails =1.2.6.0:
Install the missing gem with 'gem install -v=1.2.6 rails', or
change environment.rb to define RAILS_GEM_VERSION with your desired version.
Who knows? Perhaps DHH doesn't follow jey's instructions to install ruby and start a rails project?
In any event web services like Heroku make it a moot point. I've yet to try it out but I can easily see the attraction when a trivial google search of "ruby install error" returns 100,000 hits.
I'm not claiming other languages are easier to install. I'm saying there is value in offering development tools over the web in a way that eliminates any need for installation.
I'm no rails fanboy by far, but it's unfair to claim that rails is a hard environment to use when in reality rails goes out of its way to make RoR development dead simple.
</nitpick>