'Best' IDE for testing and debugging

Rails
1

I’m trying to decide which IDE to go with for RoR development. I put a
high premium on integrated test automated tools and debugging
capabilities. I’d appreciate any sharing of experience.

I’m currently running Instant Rails on a Windows 2000 box (using IR due
to problems I encountered trying to get all the components set up
individually). Also, I’m using the WeBrick server rather than Apache.

Thanks,
Bill

2

On 2/17/06, Bill W. [email protected] wrote:

Bill

Rails mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.rubyonrails.org/mailman/listinfo/rails

I would check out Komodo from ActiveState.

3

On 2/17/06, Bill W. [email protected] wrote:

I’m trying to decide which IDE to go with for RoR development. I put a
high
premium on integrated test automated tools and debugging capabilities.
I’d
appreciate any sharing of experience.

I’m using Eclipse with Ruby Development Tools. I don’t tend to use the
debugger very often, but it does work. The unit testing facilities are
fine.
And there’s the extensibility of Eclipse (for example, I use the vi
plug-in).

In fact, I’ve gone off the Rails for a bit to play around with Eclipse
plug-in development.

///ark

4

On 2/17/06, Aaron K. [email protected] wrote:

I would check out Komodo from ActiveState.

I’ve been familiar with ActiveState for years, because of their
Windows version of Perl. Until you mentioned this, however, it never
occured to me to check out their IDE.

I’ll be downloading the demo version tonight. For anyone who is
already using it, can you say that it’s worth $300?

I’ve been switching between RadRails and jEdit on my Linux box for
most of my development. RadRails takes up too much memory for that
particular box, and is generally sluggish. I love Eclipse, however,
and have been using it for years. So it would seem that RadRails will
eventually reach that level. jEdit is fast and clean.

What I’m really missing though, which is my main motivator for
checking out Komodo, is a good debugger that works against a running
Rails server.

– James

5

Hello Bill,
Checkout Eclipse with the RADRails plugin http://www.radrails.org.
Young, promising and free!

sinclair

6

I’m creating an AR object in my controller and then attempting to add
error messages to it:

if (master_storeids.nil?)
@item.errors.add_to_base ‘No store is selected’
end

This works without error but when it comes time for AR to add the
record, it apparently initializes the errors because the message that I
added does not cause the AR add to fail as you would expect.

Even when there is a validation error in AR the message that I added
does not show up in the list of errors on the resulting page.

So, am I doing something wrong? If not, how can I add my controller
errors to the AR errors so that they are reported on the resulting page
(and cause AR to not add the record)?

7

Bad news for Linux users though -like me :(. The version is stuck at
0.5.6 last updated on 27. Apr. 2005. And it does not run on Debian
since it appears that Arachnoruby requires Ruby itself to be patched
for its fast debugger to work.

I asked this on the list once before. I wonder if FreeRIDE would make
a good IDE. I was using it till RadRails came along. It does have a
debugger but is not especially good at rails since the file browser
only shows .rb files. With its data bus architecture a rails plugin
would be a great addition. If my Ruby skills get there I might give it
a shot.

-bakki

8

I have used Arachnoruby on windows before and the debugger worked out of
the
box. I don’t remember doing any patches to get it to work. Unless there
is a
faster version of the debugger that you are referring to. It worked
plenty
fast for me and I was able to debug rails nicely.

9

I’ve found that the best debugger on Windows is in the ArachnoRuby
product (http://www.ruby-ide.com/ruby/ruby_ide_and_ruby_editor.php).
The debugger performs very well and is feature complete. I do not
care for it as an IDE for development, but that’s just a personal
preference.

Great article Brian.

Michael

10

I was only talking about the Linux version. The windows version 0.6.5
is much more advanced and has one more year of development time on it.

-bakki

11

I’ve been using ActiveState Komodo for Rails development for a few
months
nowand I’m very happy with it. ActiveState seems to be moving in a
positive
direction as far as Ruby and Rails.

Ryan