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What do you think is the best set-up for RoR in a Win Vista environment? I've tried the radrails eclipse plug-in, and it just seemed too bulky for me, I've also started to just use Textpad and the command line, but I'm used to having somewhat of an IDE to work with.
I don't know about "best", because that's a subjective question, but I can tell you what setup I use and recommend:
Editor: E Text Editor
TextMate seems to be the editor of choice for Rails on Mac. E Text Editor is essentially TextMate for Windows. Its bundles are broadly compatible with TextMate's including the Rails 2 bundle which is included with the basic install.
Alternatively, if you're into the whole Visual Studio ecosystem, then Ruby in Steel PE might be a better bet. It's a really nice all-in-one package that actually comes with (a stripped-down version of) Visual Studio now.
Environment: VirtualBox running Ubuntu Server
Deploying a Rails app can be a pain at the best of times; deploying a Rails app from a Windows environment onto a *nix server is even worse. Plus, running Rails apps on Windows is slow. Running your tests is slow. So I use VirtualBox to host a VM on my Windows machine that mirrors my target deployment environment as closely as possible. In my case I run Ubuntu Server because there are a really nice set of step-by-step tutorials for getting up-and-running with a full Ubuntu-based Rails stack on the SliceHost wiki.
Here are the benefits of developing using a VM:
I map a network drive to the VM so that I can edit the code on it directly from Windows using E Text Editor. The VM acts and feels just like a command line window. So you don't feel like you're in a completely alien environment.
It runs Rails and other Ruby scripts (like tests) faster than running it natively in Windows
Everything is contained and snapshottable, so I can experiment and generally play around without worrying about breaking anything. If something does break, I just roll back to a previous good state.
It uses hardly any RAM. It will typically use less that 100MB (it's currently using ~43MB, but I don't have a Rails app spun-up). Contrast this with, say, Firefox which will typically be hogging >200MB and you realize that running a Linux-based VM like this is amazingly efficient.
I can move my environment between machines
I have much more robust deployment workflow
I can limit the VM to have exactly the same amount of RAM as the server I'll be hosting on. E.g., if I'm to be using a SliceHost 256MB slice, I would limit the RAM to 256MB.
I can build a seperate environment for different hosts. If I wanted to host on Joyent, for example, I could build an Open Solaris VM
Gems and other binaries won't need recompiling for your target environment
It's "a good thing"™ to get to grips with the environment your Rails app is likely to be running on. Seeing as most, if not all, commercial Rails hosts run some sort of *nix derivative, you're going to want to be comfortable with the *nix environment.
e-texteditor seems to be growing as the editor of choice for rails development on ruby. Too bad it isn't free.
Aside from that, the RailsOnWindows guide works fine. And Sqlite is by far your best choice for development: RailsWithSqlite
NetBeans is definitely recommended if you like IDEs. It has a lot of Ruby features and there's a Ruby only download.
There probably isn't a definitive "right" answer - it's going to depend on how you like to develop.
However, it's interesting to note that most of the "name" Rails folk seem to use Textmate on their Macs. So a fairly powerful editor rather than an IDE. I suspect this is at least in part because of the fairly strong TDD bias within the Rails community - not so much debugging being necessary because they're working in small test-driven steps. That's the theory anyway.
The closest analog to Textmate in Windows seems to be e. It costs, but a fairly trivial amount (pocket-money, if we're honest). There's a 30-day free evaluation available too.
I've used Scite for much of my Ruby/Rails work, don't discard it just because it's the "default" - there's a reason why it was chosen for inclusion.
As for IDEs, I couldn't get anything to work in Eclipse, NetBeans seems quite good and I tried the beta of Sapphire in Steel, also pretty slick. I just don't seem to want to work in an IDE; the opposite of how I feel about working in C#, strangely enough.
Are you just looking for an IDE, or a full stack (IDE, source control, database, web server)?
If just an IDE, I would recommend NetBeans or RadRails. Both have syntax highlighting, code help, support for Rails projects, code completion, and basically everything else you would expect to find in a full-featured IDE. Both are also completely free. Of course, both suffer from the "bulky" problem that you identify.
If a full stack, I would recommend Subversion, MySql, and Mongrel. These three are all very simple and well-supported in Windows.
Seconded for e-texteditor. I use it daily and it's great (although not without it's share of BUGS).
For the rails side of things though, I'd actually suggest a virtual machine running linux.
Ubuntu works well, the only caveat is that you have to install rubygems manually, as it does not adhere to the great debian filesystem naming ideology :-(
I suggest this because if you want to do "advanced" things, such as installing ImageMagick/RMagick, or memcached, or a number of other plugins which require native C libraries, it becomes very painful very quickly if you're on windows.
A second reason is that unless you are very atypical, your production server will likely be running linux too. It's good practice to have your development environment match your deployment environment as closely as possible, to help you find and fix bugs earlier and more easily, and avoid fixing bugs that won't affect your production site (like windows specific ones)
Microsoft Virtual PC and VMWare both have free options, which work well, and are plenty fast, so this is not a problem.
Instant Rails is a good way to get started quick.
I can verify that it works well on Vista.
I suggest you install Ruby first.
Then install Rails.
Then download Aptana and install it.
After that you can install RadRails from Aptana's start page.
Please refer to "Aptana Radrails: An Ide for Rails Development" published by Packt publishing when using RadRails.
You might want to take a look at this:
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/
There's a free personal edition too
(Updated: Assuming that you already have Visual Studio Full Fat Edition)
I am one of the contributors to Rubystack is a free, all-in-one installer for Windows that installs Apache, MySQL, Ruby, Rails and all other third-party libraries typically used on a development environment (such as Imagemagick). You may want to give it a try
RubyMine 3-4 + (RubyInstaller, DevKit for building gems, Postgres, msys git)
works perfect for me on Windows 7 as a development platform.
Well, except the problem that ruby is very SLOW with rails on windows.
Related
I'm in the process of deploying a rails application to Windows machines. I do all of my development with OS X and Linux, but the final app will actually run on Windows machines.
That said, my client is looking for an all-in-one Apache(I had to talk him out of IIS)+Rails+Application deployment/installer. He wants to hand all of his (Windows-based) clients an install CD for their respective servers (they all want their own setup).
Is there anything like this in existence? I realize Capistrano exists but that requires a great deal of setup on the hosts (especially for Windows) beforehand and it's not very feasible in this particular case.
In the past I've used InnoSetup (http://www.jrsoftware.org/isinfo.php) for creating installers, but I'm not sure that's going to work in this case.
If you guys have any input, suggestions, or highly persuasive client techniques (to talk them all out of Windows =P) it would be most appreciated.
Best.
Try with RubyStack:
BitNami RubyStack is an installer that greatly simplifies the installation of Ruby on Rails and its runtime dependencies. It includes ready-to-run versions of Ruby, Rails, MySQL and Subversion as well as a number of third-party libraries like FiveRuns TuneUp. RubyStack is distributed for free under the Apache 2.0 license and has been packaged using BitRock's multiplatform installer.
http://bitnami.org/stack/rubystack
I'd look into using jruby with glassfish. Make sure the users have java and it should be good to go.
RubyStack is the closest thing to what you're after, although you might need to tailer the install a bit and remove some unwanted baggage. I don't know of any other Windows projects for a production environment (InstantRails is designed for development).
Maybe you can make InstantRails meet your needs.
Ruby and thus Ruby on Rails is a fairly notorious deployment on Windows even in the best of circumstances, moreso when the setup is out or your hands like that. I don't mean to admonish, but this definitely speaks to matching development and deployment enviroment (I once ran into similar problems when I found out that the Java enviroment we were deploying to was a good half-a-decade out of date).
As I don't have enough Ruby-on-Windows experience to fairly weigh in on the matter, I'd say either LiveCD's or CygWin deployments may be worth looking at (Always good to broaden people's view on alternate Operating Systems, right?).
Have you considered building a single version that runs in a VM?
For this particular problem, I'd go with a traditional Windows installer package like NSIS.
When I had a client with a Windows-only IT department, though, I found they were much more amenable to an XServer than a linux server. I don't generally think of OS X as a server OS, but it actually worked really well. I tried for linux first, and when they shot it down, I suggested OS X and they jumped at it.
It helped, I think, that they already supported some Mac laptops.
Good luck!
As other posters have suggested, RubyStack should be a good option. It is free and you can always use it to run your own 'post install' scripts to customize it for what you want. If you want a supported stack or addition/modifications to RubyStack you can get commercial support from BitRock We have done so for several Rails based companies that wanted a local version, including for the guys over at GitHub
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I'm starting a new job soon where I'm going to be developing in Ruby and Rails on a Windows machine. I haven't used Windows for years, and the likes of Textmate, Git and Bash, are an integral part of the workflow using a Mac.
So, does anybody have any suggestions or recommendations as to the best tools or work strategies to use? Or pitfalls to avoid?
In particular, of course, I'm interested in the best text editor. (I'm seriously thinking about taking the opportunity to learn Vim or Emacs, or whatever the Windows ports are called, but any other thoughts would be welcome.)
Additionally, any ideas of useful plugins, tools or programs would be appreciated.
If you think that I've completely lost my mind, then feel free to tell me too ;-)
cheers !
Ruby and Rails
RubyInstaller for Windows
RubyStack installer for Windows
Rails
Development Environment
IDEs
RubyMine
NetBeans
Aptana RadRails
Text Editors
Sublime Text 2
e (aka TextMate for Windows) (seems to have been abandoned)
Vim/Ruby
bash Environment
Cygwin
Source Control
Git
Helpful Links
Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows XP
RubyonWindows Blog
Is Windows a First Class Platform for Ruby?
Related Questions
Why is ruby so much slower on windows?
Limitations in running Ruby/Rails on windows
Will using an IDE with Rails hinder me?
GUI editor for Ruby in Windows
What IDE / Editor do you use for Ruby on Windows?
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/826164/a-definitive-list-of-ides-for-ruby-on-rails
Ruby On Rails with Windows Vista - Best Setup?
https://stackoverflow.com/search?q=ruby+on+windows
RubyMine is supposed to be a top notch IDE. JetBrains always makes great products.
NetBeans or e as IDEs
Here's my incredibly detailed setup guide for Windows Server 2003, which works essentially unchanged on XP Pro and Vista. See this general installation list, and modify the instructions if you get different results. They're meant for people new to programming, so they'll probably be overly explicit for your purposes.
IMO, the one thing you definitely need is a *nix-style shell. This has nothing to do with whether you like dir or ls - you need to be able to run shell scripts or you won't get very far.
git bash (comes with msysgit) is my beacon in the storm of cmd.exe windows. It's essentially bash on Windows, and lets you run almost any script that you can run on *nix. This includes all the gem command line executables.
It gets weird in a few places.
File permissions - there just isn't a great way to map between Windows ACLs and POSIX file permissions. The Cygwin people have devoted years to solving it, but it still doesn't work all the time. git bash's approach is to just not do anything when asked to do a (for example) FileUtils.chmod. That means you may need to create a few more directories by hand, and you do need to be very aware of when something is changing file permissions.
For example, when I installed the Heroku gem on Windows, it tried to set the permissions of my Heroku credentials file, which has my Heroku password in plaintext, to u+r go-rwx. You'd definitely want to change the ACLs on that file if you're on a shared machine.
Scripts vs. .bat files - I wanted to change git's default editor from vi to SCiTE (not that I don't like vi; this was for a new-user workshop and I didn't want to explain editing modes). I had to create a .bat file that was actually a shell script. See the full explanation here:
How can I set up an editor to work with Git on Windows
I am using Netbeans, which is a good overall editor (at least for me).
For simple projects I use JEdit.
You can find the link at
NetBeans IDE
You can find JEdit at JEdit
git is available on Windows: http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/ or http://kerneltrap.org/Linux/Git_on_Windows
Basically, you need to decide whether you are going to go the Cygwin route or the MingW route. Both will provide you with Bash as well.
GVim works great. I use the native port rather than the Cygwin version.
If your development life is switching to Windows then you may want your employer to invest in this:
Ruby In Steel by SapphireSteel Software
I've used it in the past when I started tinkering with Ruby on Rails, quite nice and reasonably mature now. Also it's built on Visual Studio which I still think is one of the premier development environments around.
Maybe bring a LiveCD to work with you every morning..
you can even put it on a usb flash drive, if you use a small enough distro/big enough drive...
Cygwin as command line tool
The two best RoR IDE's I've used are NetBeans and Aptana Studio. However, for the most part I stick with Notepad++ and its various plugins (Explorer and HTML tags being two important ones).
This may not be applicable in your situation (IT restrictions, etc), but another option might be virtualization. You could install VirtualBox, VMWare, or some equivalent, and run Ubuntu (or your preferred Linux distribution, of course) that way, gaining access to the full UNIX toolset.
You didn't say whether you're using Windows voluntarily. However, this line suggests to me that maybe that's the case:
"If you think that I've completely lost my mind, then feel free to tell me too"
If you have any choice in the matter, I strongly recommend using a Unix-based system instead of Windows. If you have to go through inconvenience, spend money, or jump through hoops to avoid doing Ruby/Rails development on Windows, it will be worth it.
I've had to cope with Ruby and Rails on Windows a lot recently due to legacy systems and other developers' preferences. Rails development on a Unix-based system is much more efficient. The difference is not subtle.
That said, as others have mentioned, installing mysysgit even if you aren't using Git is helpful because it comes with Git Bash which gives you a usable bash command line.
As for text editors, I like Notepad++.
NetBeans is a really nice IDE for Rails development. Decent syntax highlighting, code completion, error highlighting. Handy keyboard shortcuts for navigation. It's pretty good.
IntelliJ IDEA
I developed in RoR under Windows for a few years, it's bearable, but Linux (or Mac) is much better for this. Lots of gems and plugins are considerably harder to install on Windows (quixml, for example).
My favorite text editor under Windows is Textpad, Eclipse is also pretty good.
If you want to use ls, find, grep... in Windows console, just download some package of their Win32 ports, install them and add to your PATH (Cygwin is definitely better, but also harder to install). You might also try out Powershell, it's supposed to be a replacement for unix command line by Microsoft.
I use virtual box, putty, and xming to do the development in an isolated linux environment. I blogged the full setup here
I've struggled a lot with Rails development on Windows. At some point I needed a specific gem that didn't work on Windows. I prefer working with a VM using Vagrant
Here's a blog post I wrote, how I setup my projects with the use of Chef and Vagrant
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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.
My current Rails development environment is Aptana + RadRails plugin on Windows XP and it's a little slow running tests, rake, and generators.
If you've evolved and proven your Windows Ruby on Rails development environment into something you're happy with and is fast, please share the details below.
Many thanks,
Eliot
http://www.akitaonrails.com/2009/1/13/the-best-environment-for-rails-on-windows
try this guide
To add on to Omar: instead of dealing with VMWare, you could install Portable Ubuntu, which runs inside Windows. Though you will get a performance hit from doing so, it will give you a Linux environment to work in and you won't have to worry about installing another operating system.
Although I work primarily with Ubuntu now, I was using a windows machine with Vim on it. Vim has a plugin called rails.vim. It understands the rails structure very well. These the things I found very useful.
Navigation between model, controller, unit test, functional test within 3-4 keystrokes using :RModel, RUnittest, :RFunctionaltest, RController.
Ability to run a unit/functional/integration test right away using :Rake
A quick jump to console using :RConsole
A quick jump to helpers using :RHelper
the goto file 'gf' shortcut now behaves in a predictable manner. It even looks up files inside gems you have installed.
The video on the site hardly does any justice to it. If you are not a vim user, then I would suggest E text editor. It is not free but worth every penny you pay.
I am led to believe that Rails (well, Ruby, really) on Windows is generally slow, compared to *n[iu]x, but since I haven't experienced the latter, I remain blissfully ignorant. In particular, there's a lag while the Rails environment loads that is tedious even on a fairly fast (3GHz Xeon) box.
On top of that, there's the overhead that an IDE brings. Of the more recent, I've tried NetBeans and RubyMine. Both are very capable and a little slow, compared to my normal working environment of command line and test editor, which pretty much suffice 95% of the time: I find I don't need much IDE support when I'm developing test-first. I still find myself mostly using SciTE, largely because of the "Run" command being easily accessible. With a little tweak to the "require test_helper" line in my tests, a single test execution is no more than a F5 away, and the whole suite available from the command line with a quick "rake".
If I need to debug into the framework to clear up (usually) some misunderstanding on my part, then I currently lean towards NetBeans, where the debugger seems a little more intuitive. I suspect RubyMine may have more power, but I haven't found myself needing it yet.
Irrespective of all the above though, the key to performance on Windows is the time to execute `environment.rb' and that's not an easy nut to crack. (Here's hoping I'm totally wrong and I've missed something super-cool, btw.)
I would seriously consider against Rails development inside Windows and my reasoning behind it is because you won't be using a Windows machine in production.
You will most likely be running some sort of Linux machine because Passenger wont work on Windows, mongrel_cluster (last time I checked) also doesn't run on Windows and IIS is a nightmare. Trust me, consistency between development and production is a huge bonus.
If you must run Windows, then I would recommend running Rails inside a Virtual Machine with a Linux distribution of your choice. That way you could use something like e-texteditor (which comes highly recommended as a great alternative to Textmate) and have a Samba share to a git/svn repository on your Virtual Machine.
Check VMWare Server out and install CentOS / Ubuntu. It's free and will give you an insight into development in Linux which is ultimately where you want to be at.
I'd recommend jruby for windows.
Ruby in Steel isn't bad if you want to use Visual Studio.
It's got it's issues, but it's not as "slow" as the eclipse variants I've tried.
RadRails so far has the most complete code completion I've seen, as it knows about your models and such far more than Ruby in Steel. Even if it's slow to load the data for it, at least it's there.
If there are not immutable reasons that you are using Windows XP, you should just switch to Linux. There are none of the weird compatibility issues that arise on Windows. If your application will eventually be deployed to a linux machine, it's easier to develop on. Plus, it would solve your performance issues.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RubyOnRails
If there are constrains that make Windows absolutely necessary, please revise and specify.
I currently use TextMate for all my Rails development, and I like it very much, but I wonder if I'm missing anything by not using an IDE. Has anyone switched from using TextMate or another powerful text editor to a Ruby IDE? Am I missing anything?
JetBrains, the people who created the legendary IDEA IDE for Java, have RubyMine in beta. DHH has mentioned it, so it must be good!
TextMate is king for Development on Mac, it's not too bloated and has so many good bundles made by the developers that use those particular languages. Can't be beat in my opinion.
I think IntelliJ/RubyMine is pretty good because I've been coding Java for a while. There's some feature holes for Rails development, but I expect that Jetbrains will quickly fix those in coming versions.
I just got turned onto Textmate because my laptop is a Powerbook 12" G4. Running IntelliJ is pretty snappy, but it makes the fans run constantly with a volume approaching "airplane engine". Working with Textmate keeps my laptop quiet.
In my opinion textmate is the best IDE if you have a Mac. It is highly customizable and you can pretty much do everything you want with it. Plus a lot of developers are using textmate for rails and therefore creating scripts and features that you can import and use.
I'm using Aptana with radrails when I'm on windows, but it's not as good. Plus you can't customize it as much. The other issue is that since it's based on eclipse it's quite ressource intensive and from my experience it's not as stable as textmate.
Aptana has some cool features, like being able to call script/generate and rake tasks directly from the interface, but this is something I could live without.
Aptana RadRails is one of the best Ruby IDEs out there, with Rails support, HTML editors, etc. It is a plugin for Eclipse, and is also supplied standalone.
I use Netbeans because I like the test support and test coverage features combined with the fact that I can use it for multiple languages & environments. They really try to provide a complete environment but I find I still have to step out to the command line a lot - starting thinking_sphinx, running cucumber, tailing logs etc.. so it is never quite comprehensive. It is also slow as hell on my slow as hell laptop.
I used the eclipse rails plugin for a while and it is also pretty good but Netbeans had a pretty good feature surge for 6.5. that won me over.
If you're on Windows you may want to look at "Ruby in Steel"
I've just found it and have not worked with it much nbut the experience so far is good. So if you use VisualStudio for your job this may be a nice addon to help get Ruby into the same environment.
On a mac it is probably not worth it as TextMate is very optimized for Rails development through bundles. I did use AptanaIDE when I was on Windows though. The main problem here is not the IDE itself but the fact that it is not useable (as in snappy enough) on the machine I had. And strangely enough for a Ruby programmer I believe that a program that makes editing unformatted text feel sluggish on a 1Ghz/Gbyte machine is doing something wrong.
Has anyone switched from using TextMate or another powerful text editor to a Ruby IDE? Am I missing anything?
Yes, I recently switched from Vim to RubyMine. (And I also used TextMate before that.) Personally I think the tradeoff is worthwhile, because of how well designed and well implemented RubyMine is. So the quality of the tool makes up for the heavier footprint.
The things I felt I was "missing" with Vim included well-implemented code completion, open files by typing partial filename, click on a symbol to go to the declaration, and a lot of other stuff.
I really like Komod for Ruby and Python development.