• From: Hamilton, ON
  • Registered: 2006-07-07
  • Posts: 38

Topic: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Just out of curiosity, what do you use as an IDE? I have tried using Eclipse w/ RDT, RadRails, RIDE-ME and a few others, and none of them seem to really work with Ruby.

It just seems to me that the demands of Ruby/Rails programming are quite different than you might find with other languages such as Java or the like.

For instance, with relationship modelling, there should be some kind of UML-type tool for creating the relationships between your various models.

Anyways, what do you all use? What works best - I am not dead set on using an IDE myself - I would be quite at home using a text editor if I could find one that simplified the job enough.

What is the best programming environment for Ruby on Rails?

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  • ryanb
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  • Registered: 2006-06-14
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Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Caydel wrote:

What is the best programming environment for Ruby on Rails?

TextMate. Yeah, I wouldn't call it a full-featured IDE, but it is extremely powerful, yet simple. TextMate and Rails kind of "grew up" together. From my understanding, DHH (the creator of rails) gave a lot of feedback during the development of TextMate, so, although it is a general text editor, it is well tuned for Ruby on Rails development. There's also a nice rails bundle for TextMate from syncPEOPLE:
http://syncpeople.com/downloads

TextMate is only available for Mac OS X though.

Caydel wrote:

For instance, with relationship modelling, there should be some kind of UML-type tool for creating the relationships between your various models.

So far I haven't had a need for any specials tools like UML modeling when developing in rails. Ruby itself works very well as a DSL (domain specific language). Relationships of models are really easy to set up and change (except for syncing the changes to the database perhaps, but even that usually isn't too hard).

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  • From: Boston, MA
  • Registered: 2006-06-17
  • Posts: 245

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Well I'm currently using xterm(s) + TextMate.  But then again I tend to be skeptical of IDEs.  (I normally use Emacs for development in most scripting languages (PHP and Python, for me); I do use Eclipse for Java work.)

What I'ld love though would be an IDE-esque application that used TextMate as its editor, provided integration with ZenTest's autotest, and added a nice search tool for grovelling over logs.  The only missing feature for me in TextMate as an editor is split-pane.  Some refactoring support would be nice of course too smile

I've never been a big user of the function signature help/code completion aspect of IDEs so I have a different viewpoint than some...

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  • From: Hamilton, ON
  • Registered: 2006-07-07
  • Posts: 38

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Yes - I really wish TextMate was available on Windows or Linux - I have watched the creencasts in which it is used, and I wish I had it here.

I have used SCite for a bit - not really a fan though. But, it sounds like scite and the command line are the best way to go for now...

I took up issue with this in my recent blog post...

http://infohatter.com/blog/ruby-on-rail … vironment/

Last edited by Caydel (2006-07-07 14:33:03)

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  • vin
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Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Textmate was a small part in my recent decision to get a Macbook over a PC laptop. On Windows I use jEdit with a ton of plugins and snippets which is about as good a substitute as I could find smile

I didn't really like RadRails, but then again the last time I really used it was around 0.3 or so.

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  • From: Hamilton, ON
  • Registered: 2006-07-07
  • Posts: 38

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

What plugins did you use with jEdit?

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  • vin
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Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Caydel wrote:

What plugins did you use with jEdit?

I basically followed instructions  like these and used these snippets in conjunction with the SuperAbbrevs plugin.

edit: it should also probably be noted that I used jEdit previous to Rails stuff for JSP/PHP development, so I just stuck with what I was used to.

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  • Reedy
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  • From: So. Ill, USA
  • Registered: 2006-06-19
  • Posts: 55

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I agree with the masses. I use textmate primarily. That, plus virtual desktops, plus iTerms with multiple tabs makes development a snap.

On my Linux box I use Radrails or Vi, depending on whether I want to load the full IDE. On windows it's Radrails. I spend 99% of my time with Rails on Mac OSX so Textmate is where I am most at home.

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  • From: Seattle
  • Registered: 2006-06-15
  • Posts: 922

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Before Rails I used Quanta+ on Linux to do everything.  It was a pretty smooth transition to using it for Rails and I really how deceptively powerful it is.  It lets you program any kind of macro you like and I've really come to appreciate the power of Kate (the program that runs the text-editing).  It handles code-folding and syntax highlighting really well.
I haven't yet figured out how to connect it to svn/capistrano to do deployment but I'm sure I'll get around to it eventually.

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  • allen
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  • From: England
  • Registered: 2006-06-30
  • Posts: 51

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I may be out on a limb but I use Dreamweaver.  It's what I've been using for ASP and PHP development for years and, with a few simple mods so it understands Ruby, it works really well.

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  • From: Auckland, New Zealand
  • Registered: 2006-05-28
  • Posts: 37

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Im using radrails.  I was a little annoying a while ago when some of my files wouldn't open in rails but the lastest release has fixed all of that.  smile

  • Registered: 2006-08-06
  • Posts: 12

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

Textmate, MySQLCocoa and terminal is all you need on a mac. Radrail is slow and crashed too many times for me to consider it trustable.

  • From: Bowling Green, Ky
  • Registered: 2006-06-26
  • Posts: 30

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

textmate is part of the reason i wanted to switch to mac, and i didnt even know about RoR till a little over a month ago! well i knew, but i was ignorant and still lost in that world i used to call php hell...

the mix between textmate and terminal is wonderful...wonderful...well worth every penny of the lifelong payment plan i have with mac till my student loans are paid off...lol

Last edited by blinking8s (2006-08-07 07:35:26)

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  • From: Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  • Registered: 2006-12-05
  • Posts: 61

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

My first tentative foray into Rails was on MS Windows using InstantRails and Notepad; once I decided I liked it, I switched to RadRails on SuSE Linux 10.1.

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  • From: West Virginia
  • Registered: 2006-10-31
  • Posts: 286

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I use RadRails, it's become mature enough to use. It's not quite the amazing synergy with rails that Eclipse is with Java, but it's quite good considering its price. I don't really take advantage of what RR offers though, like I drop out to a regular shell for rake tasks and script/console and such often.

I used TextMate on my Mac but I don't do dev on my Mac anymore. I don't do anything on my poor Mac anymore, except make sure my site looks ok in Safari smile

Last edited by tortoise (2006-12-27 01:19:09)

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16 Reply by Huw

  • Huw
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  • From: UK
  • Registered: 2007-01-12
  • Posts: 27

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

You don't say if you use Visual Studio. If so, you may want to try our IDE, Ruby In Steel. This does Ruby and Rails - editing (coloring, code folding) and debugging (step into/over, watch vars, call stack etc.). You can also import existing Rails projects. We have two versions - a free 'Personal Edition' with all the above features and a commercial 'Developer Edition' which, in addition to the above, has the world's fastest Ruby debugger, full IntelliSense, snippets and a Ruby snippet editor, code navigation tools etc. etc.

More info on our site: http://www.sapphiresteel.com

best wishes
Huw

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  • From: Louisville, KY, USA
  • Registered: 2007-01-11
  • Posts: 453

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I primarily use Eclipse + RDT. Even though I still have to have webrick running in a command window Eclipse is the best IDE I have ever worked with for any language. Eclipse also has good SVN integration through Subclipse (Tigris).

I also do .NET development which seems to go a bit smoother in VS, so I did try the Ruby in Steel plugin. I didn't do much with it, mainly just reading/reviewing code, but it seems to do ok. Reading the feature list I need to try it out a bit more.

  • Registered: 2007-01-08
  • Posts: 56

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I'm using Eclipse with RDT. It runs way better than RadRails on both of my liux boxes AND I can use it for different jobs, like programming PHP. Also the svn integration is superior and you get a lot of other tools for free (the ldap admin module is _really_ nice).

If you find eclipse too laggy I think kate is a really good editor although it lacks some nice features, like an outlin browser or the svn integration.

red

Last edited by redrat (2007-01-22 13:48:39)

  • From: UK
  • Registered: 2006-12-31
  • Posts: 24

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I am using TextMate, since I am a mac user, I am happy for the TextMate and I think no outher editor which is running on mac can do good job like you do with TextMate.

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  • From: kansas city
  • Registered: 2006-06-15
  • Posts: 383

Re: Ruby on Rails Programming Environment?

I'd love to use Textmate, but the $1500 price tag is a little much for me.  Since I'm happy with windows(that's right, i said it), I used to use RadRails exclusively.  I use RAD (Rational Application Developer) at work, which is also based on eclipse, so it just seemed natural.  Then I realized that I don't really use any IDE features.  Debugging isn't present or necessary, and same for auto-completion. 

So I recently setup my rails environment in cygwin.  Now I use vim with the rails.vim plugin.  It's incredibly liberating, and makes things a lot faster.  I never take my hands off the keyboard.  I don't use a lot of the rails.vim features, mainly just syntax highlighting.  For everything else I just drop into a shell.

The other critical part of this is Console, which is a windows command prompt replacement.  It's got tabs, transparency and other cool goodies that make it possible for me to satiate my linux urges in a windows environment.

Last edited by thabenksta (2007-01-26 10:37:09)

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