Question for David - Best Ruby IDE?

[Unnsse Khan]

Hi David,

Thanks for your wonderful contribution: the Rails Framework!

I use TextMate and an Eclipse plug-in for Ruby development.

My question to you is, will there ever be (or is it in the works) a
robust IDE built by the community which will support RoR and general
purpose Ruby development?

It would be nice to be able to debug, code complete, dynamically look
up rdoc, and auto-package gems using a Ruby based IDE.

If not, what do you prefer to use and advise others to use?

Most of my colleagues and I are waiting for the tools to mature
before making the switch (from Ruby to Java).

Cheers,

[Gregg Bolinger]

http://www.radrails.org/

[Doug Hall]

<http://www.radrails.org/>; (Standalone download, or Eclipse plugins) At one time the standalone download was generally considered to be better than the Eclipse plugin, but I haven't checked back in quite a while.

Hence, I am not David, but I can tell you what he said regarding just such a question. At RubyConf last year, he basically said that with Ruby, a good text editor goes much further than it can, if you're programming Java. Also, the entire Rails core team uses TextMate. So, I'd give TextMate a little more time, before I switched to RadRails.

[Aitor Imaz]

Ruby IDEs are getting better and better. I particularly like Textmate for Rails development, but it's only available for the Mac. The Eclipse plugin is pretty good too.

However, one feature I greatly miss is Refactoring support, and I mean something more than simple search & replace. It'll probably take some time to get a decent refactoring support for Ruby, given the dynamic nature of the language.

[Eric Martinez]

I prefer the look and feel of Textmate, its power, and minimalist appearance over RADRails. On a Mac machine I will use Textmate hands down but when it comes to windows or linux machine I will use RADRails no questions asked. RADRails is the perfect ide for those who are looking for an opensource multiplatform solution.

[Eric Martinez]

It appears David hasn't been visiting this forum so heres a link to 37signal's blog

The Tools We Use To Run And Build 37signals

[Unnsse Khan]

No kidding, I haven't found any posts that PragDave and / or David have responded too... Are they still online at the JavaRanch? Have they responded to anything?

Thanks again,

[Ernest Friedman-Hill]

Originally posted by Unnsse Khan:
Have they responded to anything?

No, it seems not. We are aware of this and they have been contacted.

[Eric Gero]

I don't have a Mac, so I can't speak to Textmate, but I use RadRails. I find it easy to use, and I like the layout.

Eric