What does intellij do that other IDEs dont vis-a-vis grails? Im trying to decide whether I should renew my license when it comes time.... thanx...
Discussing about IDEs is a highly religious task, so the following points are my personal opinion. IntelliJ's advantages are IMHO:
Debugging works better
GSP content assist
DSL awareness
better refactoring support for Groovy
Grails project view
Integrated UML diagramm of domain classes
synchronisation of dependencies
Related
I would like to know about Grails Framework. When I search grails tool suite to download,i just can find 'Based on Eclipse'. Is there anything for Netbeans IDE? Can I use Grails framework on Netbeans IDE?
Yes, You can use NetBeans 6.5 or above versions which support Groovy/ Grails development. NetBeans comes with a Groovy editor with various integrated tools and offers features like code completion, providing name of dynamic methods for grails domain and controller class. It is light and offers great functional features.
Check this link
http://grails.github.io/grails-doc/latest/guide/gettingStarted.html#ide
Also you can take help from book Grails in Action to know more about Grails framework and how to develop applications using it.
IMHO JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA is the best IDEA for Grails and it blows all other IDEs out of the water. Although you have to pay $199 for the license, it is definitely worth the $$$.
If you are a student you can get the Academic license for free :).
Is it possible to use a grails plugin outside a grails application?
I would like to use the functionality of grails-mail-plugin in a simple groovy/gradle app.
I found some information about binary plugins but I'm not sure how to define the dependency to an official grails plugin.
Thanks!
I don't think you could use any Grails plugin itself outside the Grails environment, usually there is a ton of Grails-specific assumptions built into the plugins' code.
If your Groovy application uses Spring, you could migrate the most important functionality out of it.
For this, you will have to get into the innards of the source code of the plugin (e.g. how it uses the Spring Mail package for example) which not may be very quick or easy work.
If your requirements are simple, you may be better of with building a standalone solution, possibly, directly on top of JavaMail.
If you already have a heterogeneous architecture, you may build a separate Grails application/module which only does mailing functionality (possibly through the Async Mail plugins database tables) in integration with the module you build in pure Groovy.
I have been learning OSGi and also a little about Groovy recently but am very new to both. I know Groovy is part of the Grails framework and that Grails is good for rapid development. One of the most desirable features in OSGi is class loader management and I believe this is probably still an issue with Grails (correct me if wrong). So, I'm curious is it possible, or even desirable to run Groovy and/or Grails in an OSGI environment?
There's a Grails plugin available, that turns a Grails application into an OSGi bundle that can be deployed on SpringSource's dm server. The plugin author has also posted some blog posts about the integration of Grails with OSGi. However, as far as I understand, the OSGi support of the Grails framework is still rather limited and will be "natively" supported with Grails 2.0.
In my opinion, there is no real benefit in packaging your entire application as an OSGi bundle, except that you can run it in a OSGi container. It will not make your application more modular, because it is still one big bundle. Note that using OSGi will not simplify anything with regard to class loading. It can introduce problems when you are using libraries which have not been designed to run in an OSGi environment. Don't use it unless you have a good reason to do so. It is a great technology, but it will not make anything simpler or better by just dropping it in.
I tend to think, that the other way around is more preferable: let Grails modules, like GORM or GSP run in an OSGi container.
All Groovy or Grails jars (which are modules rather than plugins now) are already OSGi-compatible, so it shouldn't be a problem to install them into a running container. Thus you can combine the advantages of both ecosystems.
On the other hand, deploying an app packaged as a huge monolithic bundle into a OSGi container doesn't make much difference compared to tomcat.
The Scenario
I am a C#/ASP.NET/MVC/Silverlight developer with a few years experience. I'm trying to kickstart my Ruby On Rails learning. I'm currently trying to get a real feel for ROR.
I Want To Know Standards
As a .Net developer, you tend to use a standard IDE (Visual Studio), a few standard databases (SQL Server, Oracle etc.), and a particular way in which to style your web 2.0 application (XHTML/CSS, Silverlight etc.)
'So what are the standard equivalents to these in RUBY ON RAILS!? (IDE, DB's, Presentation Layer Markups)'
Also
What route do I take? I've heard about IronRuby and from what i've read thats nearly complete in terms of converting it for use with Rails (IronRuby on Rails). OR Do I just go straight into using Ruby On Rails!?
What Benefits?
How will I be benefited from using IronRuby on Rails over using Ruby On Rails?
Help greatly appreciated thanks.
IDE
Most RoR developers use a simple text editor (Textmate on MacOS, Scite on Windows) - mostly because most features (Refactoring, Code Completion) of IDEs designed for languages like Java/C# can't be applied that easily on a dynmic language like Ruby. However Netbeans does well so far (on the other hand there is Aptana Studio - based on Eclipse).
Databases
Since RoR does a lot of abstraction it doesn't really matter what RDBMS you use. MySQL and Postgres might be the best choices since they are the most used ones (so you can hope for continuous support). I wouldn't start to chose based on the flamewar about performance, rather on the services/support that come with them.
Markup
The standard would be ERB (similar to ASP inline scripts) combined with (X)HTML. However there are other markups like HAML which might be enough for some projects.
Benefits
Using IronRuby you get access to the .NET framework and interop with other .NET libraries. You might also write some parts of your application in static C#. According to some benchmarks it might be "faster" than native Ruby, not a real advantage though IMHO.
At the moment I would recommend you to get started with regular RubyOnRails - you might be able to switch later on (once IronRoR is stable enough) - if you should still desire to switch.
IDEs:
On Macs the standard IDE is Textmate.
On Windows, there isn't a standard in quite the same way, but I like Netbeans.
Databases:
MySQL is probably the RDBMS most used with Rails, and hence the most supported, but I use Postgres, which is also very well supported, and have had no issues with using it.
Markup
The built in erb works perfectly well, and as it is built in I guess that makes it a standard. You can always use others if you want to.
IronRuby vs Ruby
IronRuby may be almost feature-complete, but I bet there is a good chance that some functionality will go awry, and you may have difficulty tracking down whether it is your code, or IronRuby. I'd be tempted to develop in vanilla ruby, and then port to IronRuby later, if that is an appropriate way to deploy your apps.
See also this question for information about commonly used plugins: Rails Plugins
I would strongly recommend using regular Ruby On Rails - you don't want to have to worry about whether your errors are caused by problems in your code or incompatibilities in the platform you're working with.
The rest of my advice may be hopelessly out of date- it's a couple of years since I did much with RoR, but I'm sure others will mention it if I'm entirely incorrect.
There probably are IDEs with plug-ins for Ruby now ( I'd be looking for some Eclipse plug-ins maybe ) but it's not as regimented as the Microsoft ecosystem. You're working with open-source tools which means that different developers who like different things find solutions that work for them, so there may not be a "standard" as such. I got very accustomed to using Emacs with the ruby-mode plugin which is pretty awesome but there is a learning curve. I took the Pragmatic Programmer's advice to get good at using a text editor pretty seriously on that front and I'm glad that I did.
In terms of databases you may as well use MySQL as that seems pretty standard but I believe you can find an ActiveRecord back-end for a lot of different DB solutions. If you know how to use basic SQL and you get on alright with SQL Server and Oracle you'll be able to get on fine with MySQL though, no question.
With regard to the presentation layer, that's really created through Rails views. The aim is usually to build standards-compliant html and use CSS to style it. I learned a lot from the Agile Web Development With Rails book as a guide to how the platform works as a whole. I know everyone wants to learn everything from the web for free these days, but that book fitted things together in a way I found very practical and represented excellent value for money.
If you like the Visual Studio ecosystem, check out Ruby In Steel from SapphireSteel. It's payware, although there is a free personal edition
Regarding Ruby or IronRuby - the benefit you will get from using IronRuby is only by its seamless interoperability with .Net objects.
If you're planning on using your .Net code from your RoR app, use IronRuby. Otherwise, go for Ruby.
By the way, if you're planning on using IIS, IronRuby on Rails will run more naturally on top of it as well.
Extracted from: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ericnel/archive/2010/03/25/5-steps-to-getting-started-with-ironruby.aspx
IronRuby is a Open Source implementation of the Ruby programming language for .NET, heavily relying on Microsoft's Dynamic Language Runtime. The project's #1 goal is to be a true Ruby implementation, meaning it runs existing Ruby code. Check out this summary of using the Ruby standard library and 3rd party libraries in IronRuby. IronRuby has tight integration with .NET, so any .NET types can be used from IronRuby and the IronRuby runtime can be embedded into any .NET application.
later in this article:
Step 2 – Install an IronRuby friendly editor
You will need to Install an editor to work with IronRuby as there is no designer support for IronRuby inside Visual Studio. There are many editors to choose from but I would recommend you either went with:
SciTE (Download the MSI): This is a lightweight text editor which is simple to get up and running. SciTE understands Ruby syntax and allows you to easily run IronRuby code within the editor with a small change to the config file.
SharpDevelop 3.2 (Download the MSI): This is an open source development environment for C#, VB, Boo and now IronRuby. IronRuby support is new but it does include integrated debugging. You might also want to check out the main site for SharpDevelop.
Note: as of version 1.1.1 (released: Oct 21, 2010), Visual Studio 2010 has the first-class support for IronRuby (native, rails f/w and much more).
I've been a Visual Studio user since 1997, and used VB 3.0 before that. My whole professional life has been spent inside the Microsoft development environments.
Now I would like to branch out into Ruby on Rails to try something different, and it doesn't have the kind of vendor support that C# does (for very obvious reasons).
For someone coming from the world of Visual Studio, what is the best total environment (IDE, tools, gems, etc) to set up for RoR development on Windows that would make the transition easier?
If you want to stick with Visual Studio, you can always use the Ruby in Steel plugin by Sapphire Steel. The best traditional IDE for Ruby is probably NetBeans, it even has a special stripped-down Ruby Edition.
However, note that unlike less expressive languages like Java, C# or VB.NET, you can not only get by, but even be more productive with a good text editor than with a traditional static IDE. IDEs like NetBeans, Eclipse and Visual Studio are designed with static languages in mind, and trying to force Ruby into that ecosystem is just unnatural.
There is a nice article on The Best Environment for Rails on Windows by Fabio Akita that you might want to read. While I don't agree with everything he writes (mostly because I don't use Rails), it is a pretty good introduction of how you might want to setup a development environment specifically for Rails.
Try JetBrains RubyMine. When installing it, you have the option to set it up to match Visual Studio environment settings. All the short cuts are the same as Visual Studio. It even switches the copy and paste keys from command to control on a Mac. It's a bit expensive considering how many free options there are but in my eyes its worth it.
This thing is so highly customizable it's almost overwhelming.
Netbeans! Its got the most similar features. I developed for years in VS before the switch. It was the only one that I really liked and felt comfortable using.
Netbeans.org
You might find that RadRails (Aptana) is an excellent choice: (http://www.aptana.com/rails) - NOTE: Make sure you look at the Features and Comparisons tab as RadRails has many compelling features. Additionally, I have used Aptana Studio for JQuery development and it help me to be very productive.
I have tried Netbeans and it seemed very promising as well but that is mentioned many times so I thought to offer another approach I was aware of.
Hope this helps!
I use netbeans for two reasons. I like the visual studio style navigation pane and for the debugger.
Be warned though, Netbeans is pretty slow. It doesn't bother me that much because I too am slow.
I also dislike the filename tabs because you can easily be confused about what file you are working on since there is no directory information unless you mouse over the tab.
In 2018? Visual Studio Code! These things always seem to come full circle right?