There are somewhat out of date instructions at http://cultivate.coop/wiki/Data_Commons_Directory
This is a Ruby on Rails project. We're using ruby-1.8.7. Make sure to connect a database:
$ cp config/database.yml.dist config/database.yml
(this file will need editing).
Create an empty database:
$ rake db:create
$ rake db:reset
$ rake db:migrate
You can then run the development server as:
$ ./script/server