Best IDE for Ruby

Rails
1

What is the best IDE for Ruby on Windows?

2

gvim

obviously :slight_smile:

3

I don’t know about just Ruby, but for Rails, I’m using both Eclipse with
the RadRails plugin and RadRails as a standalone. Pretty similar either
way, Eclipse has support for other languages and plugins, the standalone
does not.

I’m really jealous of all those screencasts of TextMate though. Anyone
want to port it to windows? =)

4

is eclipse free?

5

eclipse is free.
I heard about this on the ruby ion rails podcast
http://www.projectrideme.com/

“RIDE-ME is geared primarily toward developers who are migrating from
a Microsoft development platform. The familiar Visual Studio feel
should make ASP .NET to Rails converts right at home.”

although i have not used it or seen any reviews on it.

hth
John

6

I find it interesting that all of the rail’s development environment out
there don’t have much of a focus on extreme programming. At the moment
there are a lot of environments jostling for the position of the number
one environment. At the moment you would have to give that mantle to
RadRails.

However, like I said in the above paragraph it doesn’t seem to be enough
focus on extreme programming. Things like intellisence and better
documentation integration would be fantastic. also, there needs to be
much more support for xHTML tasks and code snippets of very necessary.
I can’t believe that radrails does not automatically close open tags. I
really don’t understand their direction sometimes.

That said I think they’re doing a fantastic job with all of the sub
versioning and repository features. Pound for pound you would have to
say that radrails is the most powerful development environment.

text mate looks pretty cool. Code snippets are a definite plus.
However the Mac only aspect is a definite minus. I didn’t know there
was software out there specifically for a Mac. Apart from OS X. Note
that the last few statements about software for macs are sarcastic.

7

Yes, it’s free. It’s a java app, and comes with support for Java. To do
rails, you have to download the radrails plugin.

8

i don’t know why really… but i use SciTe on any OS (ya ya, TextMate
is god… not on the MAC :slight_smile: )
it is simple, easy, and has no suicidal moves like RadRails…

9

RadRails is a good IDE. I would suggest starting out with the Ruby
Easy Eclipse distro and then upgrading to the latest RadRails using
Eclipse’s upgrade tools. Easy Eclipse gives you a couple of extra
goodies that the standalone RadRails doesn’t. My personal favorite is
the refresh button on the Navigator view.

10

If you use Visual Studio you may care to try our free ‘personal edition’
IDE - Ruby In Steel.

This has:

  • project management plus Ruby/Rails project import
  • syntax colour editing and code folding for Ruby and RHTML
  • integrated debugging for Ruby and Rails with…
  • breakpoints
  • call stack
  • drag-and-drop watch variables
  • autos
  • locals
  • step-into
  • step-over
    Plus a whole load of other things such as: Rails script-running dialogs
    to generate scaffold, model, view; Ruby and Rails Project Wizards;
    comment/uncomment marked blocks; indent/unindent; multi-level undo/redo;
    pre-build/post-build events; numerous file and project properties;
    integrated interactive ‘run console’; evaluate expressions in console;
    integrated syntax error location and many other features…

Download free here:
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Steel-Download-and-Change-Log

We are currently beta testing a forthcoming commercial release of Ruby
In Steel Developer Edition (codename: ‘Red Fire’) which will have all
the above features plus:

  • full IntelliSense
    (hierarchy and scope sensitive auto-completion lists; expand and
    auto-surround code snippets; tooltip ‘hovering’ documentation over
    class, object and method names in the editor etc.)
  • smart indenting
  • a suite of code navigation tools
  • a super-fast debugger (much faster and more powerful than the debugger
    in the free edition).

best wishes
Huw
SapphireSteel Software
http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Development For Visual Studio 2005

11

Stewart wrote:

how about…

-user defined code snippets that can be inserted by typing the first few
letters of the snippet.

Yes, we have those.

-auto closing tags

Do you mean in rhtml? We haven’t thought about that but I think this
could be implemented as snippets (we are providing ‘tab-and-fill’
snippets to let users fill out the ‘missing details’ - such as variables
or bits of code by auto-tabbing to the designated parts of the code
structures one tab at a time). In the current beta of the Developer
Edition, snippets are provided for Ruby only but we can certainly add
some to rhtml.

will intellisense just work for rails or will it include css and xhtml…
And what about haml for that matter?

IntelliSense works for Ruby currently. Visual Studio already supports
many other file types as standard (html, css, xml, javascript etc.). We
are concentrating all our efforts on providing the best possible support
for Ruby and Rails in their present incarnations. At this time, that is
our complete focus. We shall, however, monitor emerging formats such as
haml and, if a sufficient number of users request special support for
such formats or for other technologies, we shall do our best to provide
it.

best wishes
Huw
SapphireSteel Software
http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Development For Visual Studio 2005

12

Huw C. wrote:

If you use Visual Studio you may care to try our free ‘personal edition’
IDE - Ruby In Steel.

This has:

  • project management plus Ruby/Rails project import
  • syntax colour editing and code folding for Ruby and RHTML
  • integrated debugging for Ruby and Rails with…
  • breakpoints
  • call stack
  • drag-and-drop watch variables
  • autos
  • locals
  • step-into
  • step-over
    Plus a whole load of other things such as: Rails script-running dialogs
    to generate scaffold, model, view; Ruby and Rails Project Wizards;
    comment/uncomment marked blocks; indent/unindent; multi-level undo/redo;
    pre-build/post-build events; numerous file and project properties;
    integrated interactive ‘run console’; evaluate expressions in console;
    integrated syntax error location and many other features…

Download free here:
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Steel-Download-and-Change-Log

We are currently beta testing a forthcoming commercial release of Ruby
In Steel Developer Edition (codename: ‘Red Fire’) which will have all
the above features plus:

  • full IntelliSense
    (hierarchy and scope sensitive auto-completion lists; expand and
    auto-surround code snippets; tooltip ‘hovering’ documentation over
    class, object and method names in the editor etc.)
  • smart indenting
  • a suite of code navigation tools
  • a super-fast debugger (much faster and more powerful than the debugger
    in the free edition).

best wishes
Huw
SapphireSteel Software
http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Development For Visual Studio 2005

how about…

-user defined code snippets that can be inserted by typing the first few
letters of the snippet.
-auto closing tags

will intellisense just work for rails or will it include css and xhtml…
And what about haml for that matter?

13

The best IDE for Ruby on Windows is don’t use Windows.

14

Some of us are not that lucky… would love a mac - anyone got a spare
one that they would give a good home…?

On windows I’ve used project ride-me & saphire steel for visual studio
2005.

I found that project ride-me crashed a bit, & so looked for something
else.

The saphire steel works well for me, but there are a few issues.

  • I don’t get any intellisense
  • Lines numbers randomly appear then dissappear
  • Every so often CPU goes to 100% & my machine freezes - it always comes
    back, but sometimes its for 10 minutes

Louis S. wrote:

The best IDE for Ruby on Windows is don’t use Windows.

15

Matt S. wrote:

The saphire steel works well for me, but there are a few issues.

  • I don’t get any intellisense

IntelliSense is only avaiailable in the Developer edition which is
currently undergoing restricted-access beta testing.

  • Lines numbers randomly appear then dissappear

We haven’t had any reports of that. Line numbers are provided by Visual
Studio, not us, so I can’t think of a reason why Ruby In Steel should
cause this effect. If you can reproduce this problem, please email us
at: support (at) sapphiresteel (dot) com

  • Every so often CPU goes to 100% & my machine freezes - it always comes
    back, but sometimes its for 10 minutes

Again we’d need a detailed description of the circumstances leading up
to this. It could be our problem (in which case we’d like to fix it), it
could be a database timeout probem, a Ruby problem or a Visual Studio
problem (they do exist, alas!) - but if it’s our problem, we really,
really would like you to contact us with more information. We take bug
reports very seriously and are absolutely reliant on user feedback to
find and correct them.

Incidentally, if you haven’t already don so, make sure you are using the
latest release of Ruby In Steel (0.76).

best wishes
Huw
SapphireSteel Software
http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Development For Visual Studio 2005

16

Matt S. wrote:

Some of us are not that lucky… would love a mac - anyone got a spare
one that they would give a good home…?

Not the only other option

   http://www.ubuntu.com/

Do give it a good home - and I recommend kde over gnome, but that’s a
religious discussion in Linux.

Louis S. wrote:

The best IDE for Ruby on Windows is don’t use Windows.

17

Erik wrote:

Louis S. wrote:

The best IDE for Ruby on Windows is don’t use Windows.

This isn’t IGN where you can “star farm” by increasing your post count.
Kindly piss off, eh?

Certainly Louis’ response did not address the question, but I do feel
there is some merit to suggesting an alternate OS for Rails dev. I’m
sure the experiences vary, but trying to install, maintain, and keep a
Rails dev server running in Windows has left me very frustrated.

I think jEdit with the Ruby Editor plugin is also a good solution. It’s
cross platform as well. It can be a bit of a resource hog, and I know
some people feel strongly about that, but its a very powerful editor
that can mimic IDE functionality with many easy to install plugins. I’ve
used in on my Windows box for PHP I started using it at work today
because my trial of TextMate expired (probably going to buy it anyway).
There’s also a tutorial on using TextMate like abbreviations in jEdit
here:

http://ifakedit.com/log/2006/02/19/jedit-tutorial-a-how-to-on-abbreviations-superabbrevs-in-html-ruby-on-rails-and-more/

18

Louis S. wrote:

The best IDE for Ruby on Windows is don’t use Windows.

This isn’t IGN where you can “star farm” by increasing your post count.
Kindly piss off, eh?

Regarding the best IDE for Windows, I’m having pretty decent success
with Komodo. Often, I will use emacs via a PuTTY session, also.

19

On 19/10/06, Kesav [email protected] wrote:

What is the best IDE for Ruby on Windows?

A fully tooled up jEdit makes for the most TextMate-like experience
and a great Ruby IDE. You’ll need some of the essential plugins,
though, such as:

You might want to download a syntax colour scheme to suits your tastes:
jEdit Community - Resources for users of the jEdit Text Editor

Here’s a screencast of SuperAbbrevs in action:
http://we-knowhow.dk/jedit/demo.html

The model/controller switcher macro comes in handy too:
Model/Controller Switcher for RoR developers - jEdit Community

The killer feature in jEdit is its plugins and flexibility. It’s like
the Firefox of editors.

Here’s someone else’s perspective:
http://dovetailcomputing.com/blog/2006/09/18/using-jedit-for-ruby-on-rails/

HTH,

Charles

20

analyst wrote:

is eclipse free?

Eclipse and RADRails are free:

http://jsnit.com/mambo/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=53&Itemid=110