Files created when using 'sudo' command are read-only to my user

Question

I am a new Mac user who is starting to learn Ruby on Rails. I have found that I need to use the sudo statement when running commands like

$ sudo rails generate controller home index

But when I do, the files which it generates appear as read-only when I try to edit them in Coda.

I did a Get Info on the file and it appears that the owner is root and the group is staff.

Does my user jesse need to belong to the group staff?

I really just want to be able to edit my files and not screw anything up. If anyone has any guidance for a noob, that would be appreciated.

Answer 1

When you create files with sudo, those files are owned by root. You can either:

1. Use the inspector window (the one in your screenshot) to change the file owner to yourself, or

2. Run chown -R jesse myProjectDir on the directory you create to change its owner (and its contents' owner) to yourself.

Answer 2

The group (staff) doesnt have write access either. Youll have to do:

$ sudo chmod a+w {files}

where {files} is a list of the files that you cant write. Note that if you run rails generate again, theres a good chance youll lose +w and have repeat this. Note also that this makes {files} writeable by all users, so if if you let anyone else use your computer, they'll by able to modify {files}.