What's your opinion? ArachnoRuby, Komodo, Eclipse/RDT, RadRa

Ruby
1

There’s been a couple really good threads that are still ongoing about
Ruby
IDEs in general and ArachnoRuby, Komodo, and Eclipse/RDT in particular.
I’ve
been following these threads very closely because I’m writing an article
for
O’Reilly on Ruby IDEs, and so far these threads have been really helping
me
collect information for this article.

So, What I’d like to do is to consolidate everyone’s opinion in a single
thread both for my benefit, and your’s, too.

I’m mostly interested in cross-platform IDEs that are available on
Windows,
Linux and OSX. Of the IDEs that you have actually used. What are your
favorite features of each one (especially those you find essential), and
what things or omissions do you find annoying?

I’d like to keep this discussions to real features that actually exist
in
today’s IDE, and leave out stuff that we only wish would be there.

Thanks,
Curt

2

Curt H. wrote:

So, What I’d like to do is to consolidate everyone’s opinion in a single
thread both for my benefit, and your’s, too.

I messed with RDT, but, Eclipse has been ugly bloatware (this thread is
about OPINIONs right?) since day 0. So, I got rid of that pretty fast.
Junk.

Tried Komodo when it was Beta, on Mac OS X; was impressed and
immediately purchased a personal copy. Really, the price can’t be beat!
Now I use it occasionally on both Win32 and OS X for both Python and
Ruby debugging.

Only complaint, the Ruby debugger is TOO SLOW. It’s worked OK for me so
far, but I haven’t debugged anything major. I did start a Rails WEBrick
up in it once - that took a bit!

Note, I only use it as a debugger. I use TextMate on OS X and Visual
Slickedit on Win32 for editing.

Have NOT tried ArachnoRuby, but based on the other debugger thread, I’m
going to have to take a look at it soon!

–Steve

3

I’ve tried the following on Win XP

TextPad + IRB
My first staggering steps. Made some minor web pages in Rails. Inserted
in the code. Bad experience after working with VB.NET for
some years in Visual Studio. Realised I needed a good IDE and more Ruby
knowledge.

RadRails 0.4.1
I still don’t know if it’s debugger works or not. Not much
functionality.

Komodo 3.5.1
This is the one that starts the fan on my laptop. I’m writing this while
I’m waiting for it hitting my first breakpoint. 100% CPU, amazing. 197
times slower than ArachnoRuby. It seems to be related to requiring
library code.

ArachnoRuby 0.6.5
Finally found the point where I don’t need to search more. The debugging
speed is similar to full execution speed. So much functionality. The
debugger shows me all local variables, instance variables and self. And
this in all stack frames! Other nice features: Local backup, Diff,
Merge, Code templates, Electric braces, Code folding, Color coded syntax
etc. The only thing I’m missing is “Go to Definition”. Warning: it is
completely without docs. But, I still love it! It’s a perfect wrapper
for a wonderful language! This is done by one german guy in Eiffel on
Fox. And he is offering the same stuff for Perl, PHP and Python as well.
It has the BMW feeling.

Christer N.

4

On Wed, 07 Dec 2005 21:13:11 -0000, Curt H. [email protected]
wrote:

So, What I’d like to do is to consolidate everyone’s opinion in a single
thread both for my benefit, and your’s, too.

So far I’ve stuck with Eclipse, I used Java / C++ tooling previously so
RDT just slotted in, and I’m pretty impressed with it. I know it has a
reputation as slow and buggy, but I’ve found neither to be the case -
Admittedly I’ve had bad builds of Eclipse in the past but I’ve stuck
with
3.1.0 and it stays up 24/7 (literally).

That said, I use vim a lot too for single scripts, my ‘tryout’ stuff,
and
configs etc. I have four virtual desktops, with Eclipse, Vim, bash and
Opera. Eclipse kind of handles ‘the project’, but I’ll often walk around
after running rake for example to do some small updates with vim and
then
refresh into Eclipse.

The main pluses of RDT for me are:

* The Ruby outline is *very* useful.

* Test::Unit integration works nicely (as far as I've pushed it up to

now, at least).

* Sits nicely with JDT and CDT, I can have the three perspectives open

at
once if necessary.
Very handy today when I’ve been getting a handle on the
libxml/libxslt binding project.

* CVS support is a boon. I used to do everything from the command-line,

honestly I did. But
there’s just so much less to remember, and it’s nice to be able to
browse repositories,
get diffs, run compares and everything all in one place. Sorry… :wink:

* Eclipse's secret weapon - local history. I don't use this as much as

I
should, but it’s
still saved my life more than once.

* Software update features that work, and even keep everything version

consistent, most of
the time.

Also, the debugger seems to work okay, though I’ve not used it outside
of
playing with it. Generally, I hate debuggers, and integrated debuggers
are
even worse :frowning:

A few cons I can think of:

* RI view doesn't work, though I suspect that's down to faulty or

incomplete Ruby 1.8.3
packages on Fedora, because it doesn’t work properly from the
command-line either
(it’s missing a lot of docs).

* It has once or twice lost control of Ruby processes started with Run.

Again though,
I tend to do this from a shell anyway.

I have to temper this by saying that I’ve not seriously tried the others
(better the devil you know and all that), but then I’ve not found any
reason to thus far.

Ross

(Platform: x86-linux)

5

uh … as far as “he is offering the same stuff for perl, php, and
python”
… that’s a WILL offer … Lothar is currently focused on Ruby… and
hasn’t released anything to support the other languages.

j.

On 12/7/05, Christer N. [email protected] wrote:

I still don’t know if it’s debugger works or not. Not much
speed is similar to full execution speed. So much functionality. The

–
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

–
“Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! → http://ruby-lang.org”

Jeff W.

6

jeff.darklight wrote:

uh … as far as “he is offering the same stuff for perl, php, and
python”
… that’s a WILL offer … Lothar is currently focused on Ruby… and
hasn’t released anything to support the other languages.

…checking the web site. Yes, you are right. In that case I think he
should forget the other languages, as Ruby has a lot of momentum at the
moment. Actually, the web site did not convince me, neither the first
time I saw it, nor now. I dislike seeing all these “Coming soon…”
pages. Thanks for the update, Jeff.

Christer

7

On 12/7/05, Curt H. [email protected] wrote:

Of the IDEs that you have actually used. What are your
favorite features of each one (especially those you find
essential), and what things or omissions do you find
annoying?

I use the jEdit Ruby Editor Plugin (Ruby Editor Plugin for jEdit) for
editing Ruby, most recently for a Rails project I’m working on.

Essential:

  • Syntax highlighting and syntax error checking.
  • Edit history navigation: I can recurse back over my edit location
    history with a keybinding.
  • Auto indent and insert end: on hitting the enter key it adds the
    ‘end’ keyword if necessary and indents your code as appropriate.
  • Source code available under the GPL license.

Other favourites:

  • Integrated RDoc viewer: easy browsing of RDocs for system types,
    main stdlibs, and Ruby on Rails code.
  • Quote and bracket completion: adds closing quotes, etc
  • Structure browser
  • Type-based code completion: good in the situations when it works,
    shows docs in RDoc viewer as you cursor up and down the completion
    popup.
  • Progressive selection: good for incrementally selecting code with a
    keybinding.
  • Extract variable refactoring: available in an upcoming release. :wink:

Favourites from core jEdit or other plugins:

  • Split panes
  • Autocompletion of HTML/XML elements via XML plugin
  • XPath expression evaluator via XSLT plugin
  • Visual diffs via JDiff plugin
  • Project managment via Project Viewer plugin

Don’t use so often:

  • File structure navigation popup: good for quickly navigating the
    structure of unfamiliar Ruby code
  • Scope highlighting
  • Code folding
  • Code markers

Annoying:

  • Code-completion doesn’t always recognize that it’s in a position
    where it should be able to complete code, seems to occur when at the
    end of a long line of code.

Cheers,
Rob

Disclaimer: I’m currently the sole author of the jEdit Ruby Editor
Plugin. However there have been over 7,000 unique visitors to the
download page, an average of 30 a day. I’m not tracking actual
downloads at present.

8

Curt H. wrote:

Linux and OSX. Of the IDEs that you have actually used. What are your
favorite features of each one (especially those you find essential), and
what things or omissions do you find annoying?

I’d like to keep this discussions to real features that actually exist in
today’s IDE, and leave out stuff that we only wish would be there.

Thanks,
Curt

OK, promoting OS X snobbery, but i think of the (small) group of
python/ruby/C/perl-capable editors:

vim,(whatever kinda) emacs,komodo, textmate, jedit, eclipse
(Wing? Arachno?)

textmate has the nicest default syntax coloring, komodo and arachno
throw a lot of colors up (and Komodo doesn’t quite get it 100%, e.g.
meth names in singleton and class method definitions, but it works
quite well):

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-December/313693.html

9

On 12/8/05, Gene T. [email protected] wrote:

me

vim,(whatever kinda) emacs,komodo, textmate, jedit, eclipse
(Wing? Arachno?)

textmate has the nicest default syntax coloring, komodo and arachno
throw a lot of colors up (and Komodo doesn’t quite get it 100%, e.g.
meth names in singleton and class method definitions, but it works
quite well):

http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-list/2005-December/313693.html

Actually, I’d say that ArachnoRuby throws up a lot of colors. Komodo is
fairly conservative in its use of color.

Curt

10

Curt H. wrote:

O’Reilly on Ruby IDEs, and so far these threads have been really helping
what things or omissions do you find annoying?

Actually, I’d say that ArachnoRuby throws up a lot of colors. Komodo is
fairly conservative in its use of color.

Curt

i use the dark background Komodo default, the white background default
is too washed out on a CRT (remember CRTs?)

Sometimes I spew code out for a while, then have to hunt for an
unmatched paren, single-quote, whatever, so I’ll stare at it in
vim,emacs, komodo, arachno, eric, … Good to have more than 1 monitor.