Development environment

To work with Tower, you will need a few things installed on your system.

OSX

    $ brew install git
    $ brew install node
    $ brew install mongodb   

Linux

First, if you don't have it already, you will need Git on your system. The best directions for installing git on Linux can be found here: http://git-scm.com/book/ch1-4.html .

Second you need to install Node. I highly recommend installing it via NVM. NVM stands for Node Version Manager, and it installs node itself, plus any global modules you install, locally, preventing you from needing to use sudo (at least, not as often).

Next, you will need a global install of coffeescript. With Node installed, installing coffeescript is as simple as using Node's package manager, NPM.

    $ npm install -g coffee-script

Last, but not least, you will probably want MongoDB . While it's possible to use Tower without a database, most use cases will call for one. Installing mongoDB varies by system, so it's best just to link to these installation guides: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Quickstart .