What is Global Forest Watch?

Global Forest Watch (GFW) is powerful, near-real-time forest monitoring system that unites satellite technology, data sharing, and human networks around the world to fight deforestation.

This repository contains the GFW web app.

Developing

The GFW web app rides on Ruby on Rails.

OS X Mavericks Setup

First make sure you have Xcode and Command Line Tools installed.

Don't skip the Xcode/CLT install!

Next install Homebrew, the OS X package manager:

$ ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/mxcl/homebrew/go/install)"

We recommend managing your Ruby installation through rbenv. It's just an easy way to run multiple Ruby versions for different applications:

$ brew update
$ brew install rbenv ruby-build

Next clone the gfw repo:

$ git clone https://github.com/Vizzuality/gfw.git

Using rbenv, install and set Ruby 2.0.0-p247 in the main app directory:

$ cd gfw
$ rbenv install 2.0.0-p247
$ rbenv local 2.0.0-p247

Now let's install Ruby on Rails:

$ sudo gem install rails

Aaaaand now use Bundler, a rubygem manager, to install all the gem depenencies for the app:

$ sudo gem install bundler
$ sudo bundle install

If anything goes wrong during bundle install, try this:

$ brew install libtool --universal
$ brew link libtool
$ bundle install

If the debugger dependency causes issues here (like this), and can't get it to install via brew install debugger or sudo gem install debugger (sample error message), or the like, just comment it out in the Gemfile.

You may run into some other dependency issues.

rmagick

If rmagick doesn't install (error here), install imagemagick first.

$ brew install imagemagick

diff-lcs

If diff-lcs is causes brew install to fail for the GFW project, install it independently:

$ sudo gem install diff-lcs -v 1.2.4

diff-lcs may ask to overwrite a few executables. Say yes at your own risk, but it won't install without overwriting.

Once brew install finishes

We're almost there! Final steps are to update your ~/.bash_profile with your AWS credentials and the API Key for CartoDB:

export S3_KEY_ID={key}
export S3_KEY_SECRET={secret}
export CARTODB_API_KEY={cdbkey}

Last step for real. Start the app server and access it at http://0.0.0.0:3000:

$ rails server

If the site doesn't appear immediately when you visit the address above, give it up to a minute to warm up.

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