May 20, 2008 | Comments: (0)
I'm gearing up to write a comparative, multi-platform review of Rails IDEs. Before I freeze the list, I'd like to know what other people are using themselves to develop Rails sites.
Currently I'm considering these 8:
- Ruby in Steel
- Aptana RadRails
- Komodo
- 3rdRail
- NetBeans
- SciTE
- TextMate
- jEdit with Ruby plugin
Do you have experience with any of these you'd like to share?
Do you use something else for Rails development?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the Rails IDEs you use yourself?
Posted by Martin Heller on May 20, 2008 11:16 AM
May 06, 2008 | Comments: (0)
Rails, and now Java, in the cloud
I had a conversation today with David Abramowski, CEO of Morph Labs. We were supposed to talk about how Morph Application Platform, which uses Amazon EC2 and S3 for on-demand cloud computing and storage along with its own routing and provisioning infrastructure, compares with Google App Engine, which uses Google's own cloud infrastructure. That part of the conversation was short, though, because beyond the fact that they're both on-demand cloud computing platforms, the two have nothing in common. I was put in mind of Shakespeare sonnet 130, My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun.
Google App Engine, as I've discussed previously, currently supports only Python for an implementation language and BigTable for a (join-less) database, with Django and a simpler Python Web framework developed at Google both on offer to structure a Web application. I can't yet speak to what deployment is like on Google App Engine, as I signed up too late to get into the beta.
Morph currently uses Ruby on Rails as its framework, and PostgreSQL as its database. Today's announcement at JavaOne was for a beta release of Morph Application Platform for Java, developed in collaboration with Webtide. Abramowski expects the beta to fill up in a couple of days.
I was actually more interested in the Ruby version of the Morph Application Platform than the Java beta for my own projects. I've signed up for a free developer account. I've run into a snag subscribing to the DevCenter service that will let me access an "AppSpace," but I imagine that will be fixed before long, and I'll be able to say something about the service first-hand. It almost has to be better than the Rails hosting experience I had at TextDrive, now called Joyent.
Meanwhile, two user quotes from the Morph Web site:
"Morph is a great service. Deployment is simple. I give them lots of points for ease of deployment. They can help you scale as they are using Amazon's services on the back end."
- Justin Ball from www.justinball.com
"Morph AppSpace is the best experience we've ever had for Rails deployment. We can scale to as many app servers as we want in minutes, and then scale back as demand changes. We are also happy about the effortless deployment and the amazing client support. The Morph guys were helpful before, during, and after. From now on, we'll be using Morph AppSpace in releasing all our new applications."
-Jim James, www.mytripscrapbook.com
Posted by Martin Heller on May 6, 2008 01:03 PM
March 12, 2008 | Comments: (0)
The Ruby Programming Language (the book)
The Ruby Programming Language
By David Flanagan & Yukihiro Matsumoto
First Edition January 2008
Pages: 444
ISBN 10: 0-596-51617-7 | ISBN 13:9780596516178
At one of the Little Language conferences in Cambridge, Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto gave a talk on his Ruby language to an audience made up largely of academics, language designers, and language implementers. He got a very warm reception, especially when he shyly admitted that yes, Ruby has lambdas and closures.
When it came time to talk about documentation, Matz held up the 2002 David Reynolds English translation of his own book, published by O'Reilly as Ruby in a Nutshell; then he held up Programming Ruby by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt (Addison-Wesley, 2001), smiled, and said "But if you want a really good book on Ruby, read this one."
Since then, Ruby has matured considerably and taken off in popularity. The expanded and enhanced second edition of Programming Ruby by David Thomas with Chad Fowler and Andrew Hunt (Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2005) covers Ruby through version 1.8. The expanded and enhanced edition of Ruby in a Nutshell by David Flanagan and Matz has been renamed The Ruby Programming Language to reflect its intended status as the K & R of Ruby; it covers Ruby through version 1.9.
The Ruby Programming Language concentrates its 400+ pages on the Ruby language proper. Programming Ruby, 2nd Ed. goes farther afield in its 800+ pages, but has less material on the language itself and more material on ancillary matters. Frankly, both The Ruby Programming Language and Programming Ruby, 2nd Ed. are very good books, and if you're a Ruby programmer (or want to be) you should make room on your bookshelf for both of them.
Posted by Martin Heller on March 12, 2008 01:36 PM
December 10, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Installing Rails 2.0 on Windows XP
In response to Friday's news story that Ruby on Rails 2.0 had been released, I decided that it was time to update my installation. I opened a C-Shell on the Windows box I use for Rails development, typed "gem update", and promptly ran into trouble. I'm not sure why, but some of the updates failed. Maybe it's because the different packages that make up Rails all list each other as dependencies. I tried again with "gem update rails", but ran into more trouble and finally gave up.
I decided to start fresh, so I downloaded the latest version of the Ruby One-Click Installer from RubyForge, uninstalled my old Ruby version (1.8.5, which should have been good enough for Rails 2.0), and installed the new version, 1.8.6. I opened a C-Shell, typed "gem install rails --include-dependencies", and was told that no "gem" application was found.
Gems was part of the One-Click Installer, but I downloaded the latest Ruby Gems package from RubyForge anyway, unpacked it, and ran setup.rb. It removed the version that was part of the One-Click Installer, which was one revision back, and installed itself.
I opened a C-Shell, scrolled up to "gem install rails --include-dependencies", and was again told that no "gem" application was found. I tried the All Programs|Ruby-186-26|RubyGems|RubyGems Package Manager menu item, and got the Gems quick help, so Gems was there. I tried "gem install rails --include-dependencies" yet again, and yet again was told it wasn't there. By this point I was starting to suspect a path issue, so I tried "c:\ruby\bin\gem" instead of "gem". This started to run, but failed to perform the installation.
I opened My Computer|Properties, went to the Advanced tab, opened the Environment Variables box, and checked the two Path variables. As I suspected by that time, Ruby wasn't there: the uninstall had removed it, and the reinstall had not added it back. I added ";c:\ruby\bin" to the end of my User path, closed the dialog, and once again opened a C-Shell. Finally Rails installed properly, at version 2.0.1. While I was thinking about it, I also installed the Rake Gem.
Nothing is ever easy.
Posted by Martin Heller on December 10, 2007 08:35 AM
July 30, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A few weeks ago I mentioned Aptana RadRails and noted that, although I was able to download and install Aptana, I was unable to install the RadRails plugin on Windows XP SP2. I reported this directly to Aptana support, and they initially didn't know what could be wrong: the Aptana error log was not helpful.
About once a week, I updated Aptana and tried to install RadRails. Last week, finally, it worked.
My initial impression is that Aptana RadRails retains all the strengths that RadRails had in its previous incarnation, and is stronger still because of the JavaScript support provided by Aptana. I have to admit, however, that I'm not actively working on a Rails site right now: the Rails site I worked on last summer is in production with growing content, but it's stable and we're not adding features or changing the code.
I'd be interested in what other Rails developers think of Aptana RadRails. Leave a comment here, or email me at martin_heller@infoworld.com.
Posted by Martin Heller on July 30, 2007 08:25 AM
July 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The Microsoft team building Ruby for the .NET Framework has released the first source code for IronRuby. See John Lam on Software: A first look at IronRuby for the announcement. The IronRuby source code was released under the Microsoft Permissive License.
According to Lam, they are accepting contributions to the libraries, and planning to get IronRuby onto Rubyforge by the end of August. Why Rubyforge and not CodePlex? So that we can access it from Subversion instead of TFS.
Cool.
Posted by Martin Heller on July 24, 2007 08:25 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Ruby on Rails IDEs: More Free Options
The comments to my posting about Ruby on Rails IDEs on Monday have reminded me about other free options for Ruby on Rails development. First, there's NetBeans 6.0. I didn't really think about that when I was writing, because the current version of NetBeans, 5.5.1, doesn't have Ruby support. NetBeans 6.0 is at Milestone 9; the Full version (not the Basic or Standard versions) has Ruby support.
NetBeans is free and Open Source. I haven't tried NetBeans 6.0 M9 myself: I've been waiting for the release version. I'd love to hear what others think, however.
Second, Paul Colton would like you to know that
"RadRails is now officially called 'Aptana RadRails' and it is open source and free and will remain that way. Aptana RadRails also fully supports debugging."
I have been able to download and install Aptana myself, but when I try to install the Ruby on Rails support I get an exception. I'll be working through this problem with the Aptana people.
Third, Ruby In Steel has a free Personal Edition available. The differences between the free Personal Edition and the Developer Edition are listed here. The biggest differences in my mind are two features in the Developer Edition: the fast debugger, and the IntelliSense support.
Finally, even though no one has reminded me, I should mention that the Komodo IDE also has a free sibling, Komodo Edit. The differences between Komodo Edit and Komodo IDE are listed here.
Posted by Martin Heller on June 27, 2007 07:29 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
As you might expect, the Rails IDE market is continuing to evolve quickly. RadRails, which I reviewed last August, has been taken over by Aptana. What's Aptana? It's Paul Colton's new company. Paul was the founder of Live Software, and the creator of JRun. Aptana's major product, still in beta, is the Aptana IDE:
"The Aptana IDE is a free, open-source, cross-platform, JavaScript-focused development environment for building Ajax applications. It features code assist on JavaScript, HTML, and CSS languages, FTP/SFTP support and a JavaScript debugger to troubleshoot your code."
RadRails has become Aptana IDE + Rails. To install the current RadRails, you download and install Aptana, then add the Rails development feature from within Aptana. You can also download and install the Aptana and Rails plug-ins for Eclipse 3.2 or later.
Meanwhile, Ruby in Steel, the Ruby and Rails add-in for Visual Studio 2005, is up to version 1.1. This is a minor release, which includes the thread-safe debugger. I'm looking forward to the 1.2 release, planned for the end of the summer, which will include a Visual Web Page Designer for Rails. As I mentioned when I reviewed Ruby in Steel 1.0 in February, the product has fast debugging and great IntelliSense support.
Finally, ActiveState Komodo is up to version 4.1.1. Version 4.1 added Ruby on Rails support to the many other dynamic languages supported by Komodo. (I reviewed a beta of Komodo 4.0 in January.) ActiveState claims that it now has "the most advanced Ruby and Rails support in any IDE," and claims that its "lightning-fast Ruby debugging" is "now 60 times faster!"
While this may sound just a little like hype, I can say that Komodo really is very good. Have I compared the Komodo Ruby debugger with the "Cylon" debugger in Ruby in Steel? No, I haven't. At least not yet.
Stay tuned. Meanwhile, Komodo and Ruby in Steel are both available for timed free trials, and the Aptana IDE + Rails, which is in beta, is still free.
Posted by Martin Heller on June 25, 2007 07:02 AM
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