A Guide to Ruby IDE's

[Hikaru79]

WTD, don't shoot me...

I'm doing this because I think that compsci.ca has a lot of talent and I also happen to think that Ruby needs more talented advocates. So I'm trying to increase interest -- however, I think you'll be hard pressed to find a thread in this entire forum (Ruby) that doesn't ask about what Ruby IDE's are out there, and complaining that they don't "get" FreeRIDE. So this is a thread introducing the various methods to write Ruby.

Although I prefer Linux, most of the people here run Windows, especially those who don't already know what IDE's are out there. So screenshots and links are for Windows, but it's almost exactly the same for Linux. No clue about Mac OS, because I've never owned one, unfortunatly

Plain Text Editor
Wtd's personal favorite If you use a simple text-editor, you will have to compile and run them on your own from command line, which can be a hassle at first. However, just because you are using a plain-text editor does NOT mean you have to do without auto-indeting and syntax color. For example, if you have the good sense to use VIM for Windows ( http://www.vim.org ) then you can get the very prettiful output :
SCREENSHOT:



IRB

IRB is the "Interactive Ruby "... something... "Builder," maybe. Either way, what it is is a real-time interpreter for Ruby. Basically, you get to see the return and effect of each line as you type it-- great for learning! Windows users can get to this by opening up a Command Prompt and running 'irb' (If they have Ruby installed, of course).
SCREENSHOT:


FreeRIDE

Probably the most famous Ruby IDE out there, even if it is somewhat incomplete. Also, it's open-source and -- most interestingly of all!! -- it's written entirely in Ruby. So you can open it up and see the Ruby code of a huge project such as FreeRIDE.

But that aside, FreeRIDE is pretty interesting in its own right, although certainly not up to par if you're comparing it to Eclipse or Netbeans or Dev-C++ or Visual Studio or Dreamweaver. You get the idea. It's included in the Windows all-in-one Installer ( http://rubyinstaller.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl )
SCREENSHOT:


Arachno Ruby IDE

By far the most professional and eye-candyish of the bunch. However, it comes at a price -- $50-some dollars. There's a free trial version that lasts for a while though, so you can still check it out.

It has most things that you'd expect from a modern IDE -- all the basics of an editor as well as Project support, etc. Most of the users here will probably be most comfortable with Arachno Ruby.
SCREENSHOT:

[wtd]

Nice. Just, you may wish to create thumbnails for the screenshots and link to the larger versions.

Have some bits.

[rizzix]

or... Use the extensible eclipse with the RDT plugin

[Hikaru79]

wtd wrote:

Nice. Just, you may wish to create thumbnails for the screenshots and link to the larger versions.

Have some bits.

Good idea =) Done!

rizzix wrote:

or... Use the extensible eclipse with the RDT plugin

Hmm... last time I checked that only worked with Ruby 1.6 (it's on 1.8.2 now), so I didn't include it. Has that changed since I last checked? I'd use Eclipse myself if I could

[rizzix]

*shrugs* i'm not into this ruby thing. if i'd to learn a new lang it would be Haskell. But due to its popularity here on compsci, i migh be forced to know it. hmm maybe Groovy?

but why would it not work with a new-er version? did they change/add to the syntax of the lang?

[wtd]

rizzix wrote:

*shrugs* i'm not into this ruby thing. if i'd to learn a new lang it would be Haskell.

Well, now I'm conflicted. But I think I'll stick with yay!

[rizzix]

ruby didin't impress me. but haskell on the other hand. woof.

[wtd]

Anything in particular stand out?

[rizzix]

wtd wrote:

Anything in particular stand out?

all your examples. in perticular the Parser example that you provided in the Java Help section. thats unbeatable. it was actually quite difficult if not impossible in java (assuming you dont function overload)

[rizzix]

wait. didn't you overload the isBalanced function in haskell...?

[wtd]

rizzix wrote:

wait. didn't you overload the isBalanced function in haskell...?

Yes, but not in the same sense as in Java. In Haskell you can't change the type signature of a function. However, you can overload based on the form of the data.

The typical factorial function:

code:

factorial :: Int -> Int

The factorial function takes an Int and returns an Int.

code:

factorial 0 = 1

If the argument is 0, then return 1.

code:

factoral n = n * factorial (n - 1)

If it's anything else, you know the drill.

[rizzix]

ah ic .. nice nice

[wtd]

My linked list and binary tree examples show this off extensively.

As well as guards.

This pattern matching is also extremely value when it comes to compound data. Consider passing a tuple to a function.

code:

foo :: (String, String) -> String

Now that's only one argument. I could therefore write the function smewhat like:

code:

foo arg = argPart1 ++ ", " ++ argPart2   where     argPart1 = fst arg     argPart2 = snd arg

But why not just use pattern matching?

code:

foo (argPart1, argPart2) = argPart1 ++ ", " ++ argPart2

And the overloading comes in when we do something like:

code:

foo ("", argPart2) = argPart2 foo (argPart1, "") = argPart1 foo (argPart1, argPart2) = argPart1 ++ ", " ++ argPart2

Which prevents output with nothing in front of or behind the comma.

[Bored]

I downloded Ruby the other day and it came with freeRIDE and SciTE Editor. I tried both and can't figure out how to configure either to run my programs. The SciTE settings files confuze me and no matter what I do I can't seem to get the freeRIDE to run code when I click run. It just out puts

code:

>ruby C:\My Documents\Daniel\Ruby Programs\start.rb >exit

and in the MS DOS-Promt it outputs

code:

Cannot find file 'CMD' <or one of it's components>. Check to ensure the path and filename are correct and that all required libraries are available.

It's not that big of a deal because I can always just save the file and run it manually but it would be nice if I could set up either of these programs to run the code when I click run.[/code]

[Cervantes]

I haven't played much with FreeRIDE, but SciTE is my editor of choice. It should be able to run your ruby programs from the get-go.

Bored wrote:

code:

>ruby C:\My Documents\Daniel\Ruby Programs\start.rb >exit

When I run ruby programs from within scite (in windows), the first line is "ruby file_name", rather than "ruby path_to_file/file_name".

What was in your program? Does a

code:

puts "Hello World"

program output anything in the SciTE output pane?

Regarding the CMD bit, that's odd. You're running an old version of Windows, I assume? Is this displayed in a cmd prompt that was already open?