Ruby In Steel PE: Free, Visual Studio-based Ruby and Rails IDE for Windows
Today, Huw Collingbourne - developer of Ruby In Steel, a family of Ruby and Rails IDEs for Windows - has launched Ruby In Steel Personal Edition (PE), a free Ruby and Rails IDE built around Microsoft Visual Studio 2008.
Previously, Huw had focused heavily on his commercial offerings (still available, and providing exclusive features such as the high speed "Cylon" debugger), but Ruby In Steel PE is truly free (as in beer). It includes the shell edition of Visual Studio 2008, Ruby, Rails, MySQL, and Ruby In Steel itself. There's no registration required and no timeouts, and it's packaged as a simple all-in-one installer (clocking in at 175MB).
If you're a Windows-based Ruby developer not using Ruby In Steel already, check it out. It's an excellent choice if you want a Windows-based Ruby and Rails development tools solution in a single package.
Disclaimer: I have had access to licensed versions of Ruby In Steel in the past for review purposes, but there are no commercial motivations to mention the product. This is a purely editorial recommendation.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:04 pm
All the screenshots show Ruby code that is indented like it was C#. 5 spaces, 3 spaces, inconsistently.
C'mon guys - Ruby is indented with 2 spaces.
October 7th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
My Ruby indents with 4 spaces and I'm not changing that for anyone!
But if you like 2 spaces, just head over to Visual Studio Tools/Options (etc.) and set the defaults any way you like them. We have auto code formatting built in so reformatting is just a keystroke away... ;-)
best wishes
Huw
SapphireSteel Software
Ruby and Rails In Visual Studio
http://www.sapphiresteel.com
October 7th, 2008 at 4:08 pm
For a truly free (as in beer and speech) IDE, check out EasyEclipse. They are maintaining a version of the RadRails plugin from before Aptana destroyed RadRails. I had used the old RadRails 0.7.2 until I found EasyEclipse. With EasyEclipse you get a great Ruby IDE and all the other wonderful addons to Eclipse that you may want.
October 7th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
How exactly did Aptana destroy RadRails James? I'm curious. I've used it since it was first available and the Aptana builds have only gotten better. They took a poorly managed, seldom updated project and integrated it into an already great IDE. I just don't understand what they have done to destroy it?
October 8th, 2008 at 4:30 am
i just tried it, hoping to improve on what i'm using now, notepad++...anyway, ruby-in-steel (or visual studio?) apparently defaults to background-coloring parenthesis, braces and brackets with white text/blue background, which is awful for me considering i use a white background...i end up with a screen full of tiny blue squares...
long story short, i couldn't figure out how to remedy the ugly blue background (seems tied to the "Selected Text" style?!?) so back to notepad++ for me...
October 8th, 2008 at 11:03 am
>James/Ed
I have to agree with James that initially the Aptana RadRails build was no where near as good as the original RadRails 0.7.2. However it's come on loads since those first few months - I've been using over the last 8 months or so, its now way better than 0.7.2, theres some fantastic features (Oh how I love Ctrl+Shift+R!), its updated regularly and the forum is really helpful. Well worth checking back in on.
October 8th, 2008 at 11:26 am
Ruby In Steel colours are completely customizable. See: http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Customize-the-Colours-of-the-Ruby
best wishes
Huw
October 8th, 2008 at 11:31 am
I should say also that if some colours are incorrect, it is possible that the font cache may need to be refreshed. More on that here:
http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Some-of-the-colors-in-the-editor
October 9th, 2008 at 5:09 am
this part from your 2nd link was helpful for me:
"If the special colors for Ruby and Rails items are not listed in the Fonts options dialog, you may need to refresh the font cache by resetting a registry key. In the latest releases of Ruby In Steel you can do this by selecting Reset Fonts and Colors from the Ruby menu."
doing the "Reset Fonts and Colors" and then restarting ruby-in-steel got rid of the strange blue backgrounds, but i still don't get the "Ruby XXXX" options for styling (seen in a screenshot from your first link)...anyway, i'm happy enough with the default colors so i'll give it a go anyway, thanks!
October 18th, 2008 at 3:33 am
NetBeans is flat out the best ruby development environment out there and I'm on OS X. Oh it works nicely in Ubuntu and Windows as well.