Tuesday, August 14, 2007

NetBeans Ruby Support is the BOMB

OMG NetBeans Ruby support is so awesome. I just picked up some of the recent dailies, and it does stuff I just can't believe. But don't take my word for it.

Today I stumbled back into the NetBeans Ruby Wiki, expecting to just find the same old "how to download", "how to install", and "how to build" instructions. Instead I find a nicely-organized set of pages describing (with screenshots!) all of the really awesome features.

Refactoring? Check. Debugging? Check. YAML and RHTML editing? Check. Test running? Check.

It just goes on and on.

If you haven't given it a try, and you're a Ruby programmer, you owe it to yourself to check it out. And if you ph34r a gigantic IDE download with support for Java and UML and BPEL and other stuff you'll never used, there's a Ruby-only IDE available too; check the Installation page. Incredible.

Direct links to feature pages:

10 comments:

Markus Jais said...

I've been using Netbeans 6 for Ruby for some time now and I can confirm that it is just awesome. by far the best out there.
I finally said goodbye to XEmacs for Ruby.

dysinger said...

I've also been using NetBeansRubyIDE since build 89. It rocks. ZenTest autotest works now too. Grab the daily Ruby-only IDE from http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/ruby/

Jari said...

Agreed, I've switched to Netbeans as well, definitely the best Ruby IDE implementation out there at the moment. I wouldn't mind a proper graphical (auto)test runner, though :)

Anonymous said...

Oh yeah, it's sooooo great. You have to go through 10-12 different panels to get at the screen to add the .rsel files (or anything that NB doesn't think is ruby) just to find out--no Tiffany, there is no breakfast. Add the file in the list of "Extensions and Mime/types" and suddenly...

poof. No more rsel files (even in files view).

I'm going to declare that ANY editor that uses a white list to manage its files is horribly broken and DOES NOT help the programmer manage files.

Don't matter how fancy your damn refactoring is.

Daniel Berger said...

Like almost every other IDE out there, they insist on using virtual project files for project management which I utterly despise.

I've tried several different IDE's, but only Eclipse does the SCM-to-Project thing properly in my experience.

Anonymous said...

Wait a minute...did you actually try all these features out, or just read about them on the wiki?

So I switched to Netbeans recently from Eclipse/RadRails. And the verdict is...it "sort of" works. Method completion and Go to Definition work OK.

The bigger problem is all the things that *don't* work, many not specific to Ruby. The SVN plugin is pretty crappy and unreliable. Various short cuts work about 50% of the time.

And the thing is dog slow. About half as fast as Eclipse. All that being said, I'm still using Netbeans. It's just enough of an improvement over RadRails to be worth it. If they could fix some of the notable bugs and improve the speed, then I'd recommend it more highly.

--scott persinger

Anonymous said...

Are you using the latest nightlies? They're fixing bugs one after the other for the final 6.0 release. Keep in mind this isn't a final release yet :)

Anonymous said...

I have to agree with Scott experience. Having to switch to a windows box at work I think I can say I tried every IDE / TextEditor available.

My experience with NetBeans for Ruby is really far from the 'BOMB' described here... The svn integration is really crap... auto adding file is something I really despite. Having the netbeans project folder automatically added to my local repo and then to subversion (inadvertently) is another crap I disliked.
Add to that the extreme slow boot time and project opening (why adding a netbeans specific project folder in my project if all my files and libraries are parsed each time I open my project ?).
The virtual project file is another one I dislike why renaming my folders ? Isn't this semi-strict hierarchy a feature of RubyOnRails ? Why renaming my folders and hiding the nesting ?
Did I mention the semi-working "go to file" ? It find the file by its full name only one time out of ten and is damn slow.

All in all, I did not really find NetBeans so extraordinary... at least for the Ruby/RubyOnRails dev. I do each day.

ajasja said...

I think NetBeans is the best Ruby IDE out there at the moment
(And I have tested Aptana, Arachno, RoRED, jEdit, Mondrian and Arcadia as well:)
Maybe http://www.codegear.com/products/rubyide
will do something to improve the IDE situation?:)

Jon Tirsen said...

Every month or so I download the latest nightly build of NetBeansRuby. Every time I spend about 20 mins trying to even get to a Ruby editor... to no avail. The complaints are different every time, either I don't have Rails installed (it's in vendor/rails) or I don't have the Ruby interpreter (it's in a non-standard place). And so on and on...

I'm sure it's great, but I think I'll wait for the GA release before I try again. :-)