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I am a java developer and use the Eclipse IDE for developing java code. I use the built-in refactoring features a lot, since good refactoring support from the IDE helps to speed up and leads to higher code quality. I would not like to miss it and use a simple text editor instead. Now I am looking for an IDE for Ruby on Rails with good refactoring capabilities.
Basic refactorings
Wanted basic refactoring methods include:
Extract method
Extract variable
Rename (class, method, variable etc.)
and so on.
Aptana Studio 3, RadRails 2, RubyMine 3 and Netbeans 7
So far I've tried Aptana Studio 3 and was quite disappointed regarding its refactoring capabilities. Aptana RadRails 2 seemed much better for refactoring ruby code, but it lacks other nice features that the newer Aptana Studio 3 offers. Since Aptana Studio 3 seems to be RadRails' successor I would expect that it has at least the same refactorings as the older RadRails 2, but it does not. Using an old unmaintained IDE does not seem a good option. Receiving updates for the IDE should still be possible.
I've read that Jetbrains RubyMine 3 has decent ruby refactoring capabilities, but it costs money. I am rather looking for a free one. Netbeans 7 seems not to support Ruby on Rails anymore.
Are there good IDEs with refactoring support?
That confuses me, it seems like modern IDEs drop (refactoring) support for Ruby on Rails.
What are nowadays (Jan 2012) the most powerful IDEs for refactoring Ruby on Rails code?
Update: Netbeans 7
As suggested by Jörg W Mittag I've tried Netbeans 7 with the ruby plugin provided by the community. I have to say that this combination is much better than Aptana RadRails 2 or Aptana Studio 3 for developing Ruby on Rails apps. The integration of css and html for views is well done and the integration of rails tests into the JUnit Netbeans view comes in handy.
However, the refactoring support seems to be too basic. It supports rename, move, copy and safely delete of methods. It does not support to select lines of code and extract a method out of it nor the similar behaviour for extracting variables.
Update: RubyMine 3
dynex suggested to use RubyMine. I've just played around with it and think its suitability as an Ruby on Rails IDE is at least as good as Netbeans'. The refactor capabilities are by far the best I've seen in a Ruby on Rails IDE so far.
From what I've discovered it features renaming, moving, copying, safe deletion, method extractation, variable introduction, constant introduction, field introduction, parameter introduction, inlining, pulling members up, pushing members doen, module extraction and superclass extraction.
My conclusion is that from the set of IDEs I tested RubyMine was the only one with decent refactoring capabilities. RubyMine costs money, but it seems worth it. The free ones cannot compete regarding refactorings.
Thanks for all answers and comments.
RubyMine was my choice and I use refactoring once in a while. When using 'rename' it's never complete, but better than global-search-replace. Extraction etc works well.
Overall it's a great tool, albeit a memory hog, but I use it all the time now, especially for debugging.
I know, it costs money, but I wanted to put in a good word for them anyway...
Netbeans 7 seems not to support Ruby on Rails anymore
That's not true. Quite the opposite actually. Yes, Oracle dropped support for the Ruby on Rails plugin and gave maintenance over to the Ruby community. But the plugin is still available from the same place it was before, the community is still using the same infrastructure to develop, maintain and distribute the plugin as before. And since most of the people who originally wrote the plugin work for Google now, they can now again work on the code, now that it is no longer owned by the company that is suing their employer.
Thanks for this question firstly, coming from java platform I was not comfortable with the text editors or IDEs available for RoR. I just started using RubyMine for 2 days now and yes it has a reasonable support for refactoring compared to text mate editor. Apart from the other features mentioned here I like code formatting, column selection mode (especially for .haml files), I use Ctrl+Tab to browse between the tabs (as in Netbeans) and of course find usages. I am not yet comfortable with the git integration part yet, need to explore that. If I find anything amazing will update my post.
Coming primarily from a .NET background, I am quite attached (for better or worse) to Visual Studio.
I'm going to school for software engineering now, though, and my first class is in XP (Extreme Programming) using Ruby on Rails. Mostly I've heard that when you're developing in Ruby, you tend to skip the whole IDE altogether; and I'm totally open to that possibility. There are IDEs out there, though, and so it seems like there must be at least some folks who still find that using one is worthwhile.
Since I am so familiar with VS, I was just wondering if anybody out there has used Ruby In Steel. From the website, it certainly looks nice. I have literally no idea how useful or appropriate it is for general RoR development, though, which is why I thought I'd throw this question out there.
Have you used Ruby In Steel? What are your impressions of it? How does it stack up against other well-known IDEs such as Netbeans? And is it even worthwhile to use an IDE for RoR development, or is a good text editor preferable?
Short answer
Skip the IDE and use Vim (or your favorite, simple, text editor)
Long answer
I'm a C# developer and have used Visual Studio as an IDE since I started programming. I love Visual Studio and always laughed at those people who didn't use an IDE. I just didn't get it. So when I started learning Ruby on Rails, the first thing I did was look for the best IDE available. I tried NetBeans, RubyMine, Aptana, and every text editor I could find (not Ruby in Steel, however, b/c I didn't want to pay for it).
I settled on NetBeans finally and thought it was pretty good. But it takes 30-60 seconds to load. And you soon find out that intellisense with ruby doesn't really work (and even if it did, the rails api's don't really make sense with intellisense anyway). What happened was that I found myself using Notepad++ to make quick edits to my files.
But then slowly I started using Notepad++ more often and would need to have my server running, so I opened up the console to run the server (instead of my ide). Then I needed a controller generated, but it was faster to look up the command line syntax to generate the controller than it was to load my IDE. That's when I started to realize that I didn't really need, or even want, and IDE for rails development, I was perfectly happy with Notepad++. Those no-IDE guys weren't so crazy after all.
So I started looked at all of the text editors I could find and ran across Vim (you know, that crappy old text editor that those grumpy old programmers used to use before I was born). Vim, with some rails plugins, is all I use now for rails development. It was hard to convince my Visual Studio loving self that a console based text editor would actually make me more productive than an full IDE, but once I gave it a chance, I was really impressed.
Now, learning Vim and Rails and Ruby at the same time is a large undertaking, but I would at least recommend you learn the rails command line and use your favorite text editor, instead of a fat, slow, $200 IDE.
I looked at the original release - it was nicely done but the trial period expired and it hadn't become essential to my development existence. To date, no IDE has, although I do keep an up-to-date install of NetBeans for the occasional foray into Rails framework debugging (that's usually bugs in my understanding rather than bugs in Rails, btw).
While the IDEs (and I note that Ruby In Steel 2.0 was just announced in early Nov 2010) are all smart, I have tended to find that applying TDD mostly removes the need for IDE-based step-through style debugging.
Assuming they continue the trial program as before, you should be able to spend 60 days with RIS 2.0 before you have to commit any money. That ought to be enough to establish whether or not it can be worth buying.
I was really interested in Ruby in Steel but I didn't find the trial very useful. This was some time ago and it has more features now. Before you plonk $200 for this, I'd definitely give Aptana RadRails a try as a free IDE, or look at e-TextEditor which is what I use now. It has really good bundles for rails development and is also a great general purpose editor; although it does not have an integrated debugger I've found that I am just as effective without it using the rails console.
Has anybody figured out a way to make the Netbeans intellisense for ruby and rails better? It either has too many options in the list (which I understand is a problem since it is a dynamic language). Or it has no options in the list, as if it is not dynamic enough to find everything.
Are there any hacks to make it better, or is this just something that needs to be improved within the Netbeans source code? I'm currently using 6.8.
Please spare me the posts about how I don't really need to use intellisense, and I should use vim or emacs. I'm sure the vim programmers are 10 times more productive than me with all their cool shortcuts, but I have no desire to learn these tools.
if you click on options, in tools and select options.
Then go to miscellaneous tab, and select ruby.
enable extended type interface (may be slow)
check on for methods.
I tried doing this it is giving me better intellisense with methods like p, and protected methods as well.
I am using netbeans 6.8 and I suppose this would offer you better intellisense.
I'm with you on intellisense. If you're on a Mac, you might try Coda from Panic. It has better intellisense than either RadRails or Netbeans for Ruby/Rails IMHO.
Sadly you just have to wait. I read that Oracle is now focusing NB on scripting languages, and there were plans afoot to add most of what you are talking about to 6.9.
You can check out the nightly builds here: http://bits.netbeans.org/download/trunk/nightly/latest/
They've already hit milestone 1.
It has to be improved by the Netbeans team. There's nothing you can really do to help it.
[edit: oh, and you can have code completion with Vim, so .. You should use Vim! :p]
There's been improvements in 6.8, but it's still far from perfect, and you mentionned you are already using 6.8.
You might want to try RadRails - can't tell you if their code completion is better though (I'm a NetBeans user), but I seem to recall reading it was.
I haven't gotten to play with Ruby and Ruby on Rails in NetBeans 6.9, but one of the features touted by the Release Notes was improved code completion in dynamic languages (Ruby, Ruby on Rails, and Python). You might want to consider upgrading (if you haven't already) and checking it out.
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I've seen a lot of blogs talk about RubyMine lately, as a best of breed Rails IDE. Currently, I am using NetBeans IDE for my Ruby and Rails stuff, but I was wondering if anyone here would personally recommend this IDE, and reasons why I should fork out $99 for it.
I used NetBeans for a while, before switching to RubyMine some month ago prior the first release.
I can say the IDE is worth the entire price.
RubyMine has the best autocomplete support I have ever seen. It's a really clever IDE, it can understand most of the Rails "magics" including method references by symbols
class Controller
before_filter :mymethod
def mymethod
end
end
metaprogramming, Rails/Ruby convention and so on.
Also, RubyMine 2.0 introduced i18n support for Rails and, having to maintain a couple of Rails apps localized in 5 different languages, I must say this is an awesome feature.
It supports the latest testing frameworks in the Ruby ecosystem, including Shoulda, Test::Unit, RSpec and Cucumber. Unfortunately it lacks RCov support, while I know Netbeans is going to integrate it.
A couple of co-workers are still using NetBeans and they often have problem with SVN because Netbeans doesn't auto-refresh the working copy when you update it outside the IDE.
RubyMine has an excellent SCM support and ships with SVN, CVS and even Git compatibility.
I don't want this answer to seems like a RubyMine promo, so I encourage you to give it a try for 30days then make a choice.
I've tried Netbean, RadRails and RubyMine. In my personal opinion it's well worth the money, and I heartily agree with weppos.
Your best bet it to try the evaluation version for a while and make your own mind up. I find IDE preferences are very subjective, the only real way to know if it's any good is to try it for yourself.
it is a little buggy and a big resource eater but has the better "intellisense", refactoring, and complementary areas support (haml) i ever seen for ruby/rails. it's appearance under mac os x is lame and is much less usable (in terms of UI usability) than any other ide. i guess that in the next major versions it will become the ruby/rails killer-ide. i would wait to buy it, as i see it as an immature project right now.
Suffice to say that Rubymine (2.5 EAP version) is the first IDE I actually like. Having used
to excellence of developing Rails apps in OS X with TexMate, when I switched the job and was forced to get along without OS X, I was quite satisfied to find Rubymine.
A veteran Emacs user (over 10 years) and recent Vim convert (gotta love the extremely powerful command system and short key bindings), I soon found that either the file navigation, cucumber editing or refactoring support was quite lacking in those. With Rubymine, I get TextMate-style file navigation which is just awesome, the only IDE which actually has a type inferencing engine and is able to capture many run-time errors during the editing phase, plus all the features I ever used in Rails projects.
Yes, I'm going to buy the software when they release 3.0 or so, and I don't know if I'll use TextMate in the future when I get again access to OS X. They say the OS X support is very good in Rubymine EAP versions, but what's nice that you can have that for every other OS as well.
Apologies for answering in short. I'll add that debugging via RubyMine is very convenient. Just set a breakpoint and try to hit the point. You can see all of your vars, set watches, and investigate objects right in the debug console.
I'd highly recommend it to any Ruby developer.
To me, there are 3 big advantages in RubyMine that other free or cheap editors/IDE's don't have (notably TextMate and Ruby VIM):
The ability to browse all the gem sources, navigate to the definition of a library method deep in a gem in a single keystroke (CTRL + B on Linux, Cmd + B on Mac), or related docs (CTRL + Q on Linux).
Graphical debugger integration. If you are debugging with print statements and the command line debugger is too cryptic too you (can't see the forest for all the trees), then the time savings alone of debugging a running test suite or live server are worth the price of RubyMine (if you value your time at all).
The continued dedication of the JetBrains team to keep up and integrate with all the whims and trends of the open source tool chain. In the 3 years, I've used RubyMine exclusively, I've seen them follow and integrate with every thing that's gaining traction. Their responsiveness is unmatched. Just 3 examples of this: Native cucumber specs in 2009, RVM in 2010, CoffeeScript in 2011.
I use it, and as of right now, don't think it's quite worth it - if you like working with a full IDE, RadRails is as good (though in different ways), and free. I admit, I haven't got all the keyboard shortcuts in RubyMine down, so I'm not as productive with it as I hope to be, but I find myself doing stuff at the command line more than I think should be necessary with a 'real' IDE. It's been pretty stable for me (on linux), the source control integration is good, and it's not as slow as it used to be (though I still end up in vim at times, if I don't want to load it). I'm hoping a 'plugin' ecology will develop around it. Overall, it's a pretty good product, but not (yet?) worth the $99 over RadRails (haven't used NetBeans)
I've used Netbeans for a while(1+ year) now. and have tried RadRails too. but i choose RubyMine cause:
the base IDE is very solid and has a
ton of plugins
it's generally more intelligent and have good refactoring abilities.
it supports a good number of other frameworks and technologies outside ruby and rails (like SaaS, haml, cucumber, shouldr, rspec...etc).
it supports my favorite version control system: git.
all in all i think if you take some time to learn its key mappings, you can be very productive with it. you wouldn't need to use a shell at all(well sometimes you might need to but...you get the idea).
just my 2 cents
I've been using Rubymine to develop Rails apps for a while now.
There was a point a few months ago when I would have been hesitant to recommend paying for it.
However the rate at which it has been improving and adding new features is really impressive.
If you're doing BDD (with Cucumber) then it's worth buying just for the step completion and navigation.
Also the features that have come from IntelliJ like Javascript, HTML, CSS, VCS support etc are excellent.
I am a former NetBeans user. I LOVE RubyMine! It has excellent rvm, git, Rspec and cucumber integration, all of which are in my stack. Go with it. You won't be sorry.
I used both Redmine and Textmate but I tend to spend more time coding in textmate. It's a matter of preference whatever gets the job done quicker is the best tool in my opinion.
Good Luck #johnrlive
I love how "project aware" RubyMine is. Coming from ST2 (which is still use daily), it's hard not to miss the elegance of an editor like ST2 but working on large scale projects with versioning, RubyMine is the IDE of choice for me. I just wish the would improve the editor and UI.
I just started to explore the IDE concept, being a happy TextMate programmer until just a couple days ago. But now that I've played with both NetBeans and RubyMine, I gotta say RubyMine rocks. NetBeans is cool for the price, but it's slow, slow, slow. Sometimes windows will lock up for long periods of time while something is apparently "thinking" - of what, I can't imagine. On the other hand, even as a fairly novice Ruby programmer, I was able to get RubyMine conversing with Git and AutoTest within a few minutes -- in short I got up and running and back to programming pretty quickly. On the flip side, I still haven't figured out how to get it to work with Heroku or Growl, but I'm still pretty new at it.
I would say depends on what your looking for. Netbeans is definitely a very capable and sufficient IDE. Rubymine shines in its autocompletion and really easy Git integration. If you have a lot of money to spare I would say ruby mine is the way to go. However, in my case, as I am a broke college student Netbeans and/or text mate does the job fine. Spending an additional minute on git outside of netbeans and using my extra monitor for documentation has worked well for me thus far.
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What Ruby IDE do you prefer?
I've generally been doing stuff on Microsoft .NET out of college almost 2 years ago. I just started looking at Ruby on Rails. So what editor should I use? I'm using Notepad++ right now but can I get debugging etc. somehow?
Try both NetBeans and RadRails for maybe a week each, then you can find which works best for you. The best advice is to learn your tool. If you are not checking out something new about your editor, something that could potentially save you time (regexp, etc) then you are doing yourself a huge disservice.
I have been using Eclipse/Aptana/RadRails and unlike Gaius have been pretty happy with it.
I recommend the Eclipse IDE for Java Developers from Eclipse Downloads: http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/
Then grab Aptana Studio, following these instructions.
When Eclipse restarts Aptana will have a view, click on rad rails and you are good to go. Just make sure you have ruby installed already, or it becomes a pain to resolve.
Aptana Studio
I use it for all web development - HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript, Rails...
EDIT: For full disclosure, I'm biased toward Aptana and RadRails as I know a few members of the original RadRails dev team.
rubyMine is the most full featured IDE for Rails at the current time (2012).
Personally, for rails development I had used Eclipe for several months and then netBeans for several weeks and rubyMine is clearly better than them.
It's great in all the areas that count - code views, search and replace, source control management, testing, debugging and it's got features like viewing a model dependency diagram that are really neat.
It isn't free - cost about $50-$100. This has recently become a key positive criteria for me. Too many "free" products that I invest thousands of hours getting proficient in eventually die and stop being developed but paid products pay for continued development. I've become weary of investing a lot of time and energy into such products only to have them wither and die. Given the hundreds of thousands of dollars one earns from rails development a $100 tool is a bargain.
Despite how much I love rubyMine I still use vim along side it. Sometimes my tasks works better with vim, sometimes with rubyMine.
I've been very happy with E. It's pretty lightweight and supports TextMate snippets and commands, which means you get access to a huge set of Rails-specific helpers.
However, it is decidedly an editor and not an IDE, so you won't get debugging, built in console, etc. But I've found that for Rails projects I prefer a light editor and a shell (like Console) for tests, debugging, etc.
I've been using Aptana/Eclipse/RadRails, but if I were to do it again, I'd definitely try NetBeans. Aptana has been a major headache.
I've never used IronRuby, but that might make you feel more at home.
The Netbeans IDE is a good, all around editor for many languages. I'm pretty sure the 6.5 beta has support for Ruby on Rails, along with Javascript and a few other web languages. It's worth checking out (Netbeans.org).
Sapphire in Steel integrates with Visual Studio.
I mainly code ColdFusion or PHP (and JS/CSS/xHTML), but have dabbled in a bit of RoR. RadRails/Apatana has been great for me, because it's built on Eclipse, which I was already using for my other work. It also integrates with Subversion via the Subclipse plugin.
The Eclipse platform is so extensible that it's worth investing a bit of time in to learn, but then again I like having a single IDE rather than having to switch between different apps.
I briefly looked at Netbeans, but TBH Eclipse just felt better for me, and Aptana itself is great when you come to do anything in JavaScript.
YMMV...
I use Emacs on Windows.
Installing and configuring it to work with rails is a pain though.
I found Geany to be a lightweight alternative (which works on linux as well with little modification), although I am checking out Gedit for features that not present or implemented as well in Geany.