Using the Ruby Dev-Tools plug-in for Eclipse

An anonymous reader writes "IBM Developerworks is running an article that introduces using the Ruby Development Tools (RDT) plug-in for Eclipse, which allows Eclipse to become a first-rate Ruby development environment. Ruby developers who want to learn how to use the rich infrastructure of the Eclipse community to support their language will benefit, as will Java developers who are interested in using Ruby."

Comments

What doesn't Eclipse do?

[stoolpigeon]

Really.
 
I think there is a plug in that should scratch just about any itch. Nice.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Coryoth]

I think there is a plug in that should scratch just about any itch. Nice.

Indeed, the Python and Perl plugins are both very nice and from the look of it more featureful than the Ruby plugin at the moment (though I expect it's only a short matter of time before that evens out). I think its more a matter of what languages aren't currently covered? There are apparently plugins for Eiffel and Haskell and Ocaml and SPARK and Scheme (though I can't vouch for quality on any of those) and pretty much anything else you can imagine (given that those were random searches on my part).

Jedidiah.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

Here you go.
Tons of language plugins.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[ScottyH]

I can't find one for Objective C. I've been looking.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

block / column mode cut/copy/paste support..

mcedit supports it (shift-f3)
ultraedit supports it (alt-c)
vim supoprts it (through some odd macro based extension)
emacs supports it (obviously)

now, not all have as nice of a support as ultraedit (my fave editor), but eclipse lacks this *BADLY*.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Coryoth]

Wow, you're right, I can't find much beyond this which is a mutlipurpose plugin, but does at least support Objective C, though only really providing syntax highlighting and not all the goodies you can expect from other eclipse plugins.

Jedidiah.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't have VIM!!

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[sien]

The emacs plugin is fantastic. You can now run the whole of emacs inside Eclipse.

The emacs developers are also hard at work on a complimentary cross plugin too I hear.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[John Whitley]

[Eclipse lacks] block / column mode cut/copy/paste support..

No, it doesn't. This is currently provided by the Lunar Eclipse project, which publishes a few Eclipse plugins. Specifically, look at the rectangle copy/cut/paste/edit operations in the Editor Enhancements plugin created by that project. (Note: the Emacs-style Alt-/ completion mentioned on these pages was integrated as a part of Eclipse itself.)

Also, Eclipse has a useful stock feature which covers one use case for rectangular edits: block indent change. Highlight a few lines of text, then hit tab/S-tab to increase/decrease the indent of all highlighted lines uniformly. It's such a simple feature, but I love it.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Dan Farina]

...Truly the emacs of this generation.

From vi, to emacs, to eclipse (ratios of memory usage in each generation maintained!)

I actually do not like the eclipse editor component as much as emacs. Ideally, I'd want the GUI-esque browsing/completion/etc of eclipse with the emacs editor. (There have been attempts at this, but none of them feel "right")

It's also harder to write ad-hoc extensions to an eclipse plugin, which is one large benefit emacs has over it.

df

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[GileadGreene]

The Haskell plugin is pretty limited at this point. The Ocaml one even more so. But then, they are both considered alpha-level.

As for non-supported languages, I haven't seen a plugin for occam or occam-pi yet...

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[lewp]

Emacs running inside Eclipse...

I think I'm going to need a bigger boat^W^Wmore memory.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[lewp]

vim supoprts it (through some odd macro based extension)

Isn't this just C-V? Seems to work for me in stock Vim. Not really on topic, I guess. Sue me :(.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

There is no good C# plugin. Improve is old and crufty.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Dlugar]

How about a free Vi plugin that doesn't suck? (There's only one vi plugin that I know of, it costs money, and it basically sucks.)

If anyone's interested, I'm wanting to write one. I've got the Java skills, but I don't have the Eclipse-plugin-writing skills. Let me know if you can help out.

Dlugar

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

It doesn't auto put-on-save (if you need FTP); this is my biggest issue with Eclipse. Better, more up to date, would be nice for CF too. Although I'd love to use it every day, it makes my work too difficult for me.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Mechanik]

You forgot CDT Project for C and C++ development. The project is growing in popularity to the point where we're having our own developer's conference in a couple of weeks, totally separate from EclipseCon.

It's starting to seem like everyone and their brother that's doing a C/C++ IDE is standardizing on CDT. If the trend continues, perhaps one day we will unseat Visual Studio as king of the heap, although there is a long way to go still.

The most important thing I can say, regardless of your language of choice, is to grab a keyboard and lend a hand, if you're able, to your favourite project. Eclipse (and CDT especially) are community driven, and the best way you can help these tools succeed is by giving us some of your spare cycles, even if it's just filing the bugs that you find. If you submit patches for them along with the bug report we'll love you forever :-)

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[DamienMcKenna]

Word wrapping?

Dmaien

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Naikrovek]

Personally, and this may sound stupid, but I'd like to see Eclipse understand Vi commands and behave as Vi does.

the shortcuts that Vi uses are superior for me, and Eclipse (being the best Java IDE for me) I'd like to see Eclipse use Vi keyboard commands through a plugin.

Anyone have a free plugin for that?

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Writer]

Anything on Forth? I heard of a language module for BBEdit a while back. Just curious because of this article that came out some time ago .

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

I think there is a plug in that should scratch just about any itch. Nice.

My ass itches (too many CmdrTacos!). Do they have a butt plug for me?

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Pleb'a.nz]

One word (acronym) SCP.

There hasn't been a reliable SCP plugin for 3.x, only for 2.x days. Where did it go?

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Anonymous Coward]

1989 called, they wanted their bloated Emacs joke back.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[richieb]

...Truly the emacs of this generation.

How true!

It's also harder to write ad-hoc extensions to an eclipse plugin, which is one large benefit emacs has over it.

Hmmm... maybe we need a Elisp plugin ;-)

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Monokeros]

[Eclipse lacks] block / column mode cut/copy/paste support..

No, it doesn't. This is currently provided by the Lunar Eclipse project . . .

That's not really block selection though, is it? Block selection is drawing a selection rectangle on the text and then being able to directly edit that block by typing or pasting some text. The Lunar Eclipse plugin doesn't get you a selection block on the screen that makes it obvious what you're selecting. It also doesn't let you directly edit the (unseen) block. You have to invoke a dialog to do anything.

It's better than nothing--which is what eclipse has now. However, it's not what people expect when they ask for block/column mode selection.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[Yazheirx]

At our shop we us Eclpse to code in Java, PHP, C, C++ and Nulsoft Installation Scripts. This only leaves one language where we have to use note pad or TextPad. VBScript

If anyone knows of a VBScript plugin for Eclipse please pipe up and make a crappy job (coding in VBScript) a bit less crapy.

Re:What doesn't Eclipse do?

[legirons]

"I think there is a plug in that should scratch just about any itch. Nice."

Eclipse.. the open-source massage chair...

RadRails

[TedCheshireAcad]

Making use of this and the Eclipse RCP, the RadRails is also making a big contribution to the community.

Re:RadRails

[Trejkaz]

RadRails is great, but the setup is a bit of a pain in the butt. I have to tell it where Ruby is, for instance... something it doesn't even need to know. It could just run "ruby" and let the path take care of it.

But anyway, any steps towards autocompletion and automated code refactoring for Ruby are fine by me. And moving into an IDE which is capable of these things is a step. :-)

Shhhh!

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't give them ideas!

Gaining Popularity

[matr0x_x]

My employer (a major high-tech corporation) has recently been encouraging the use of this plug-in for Eclipse. From what I can see, RDTs will take off in the near future!

but can it

[Anonymous Coward]

But can it knit stupor heroes?

Radrails

[augustz]

Checkout RadRails

RadRails is an integrated development environment for the Ruby on Rails framework. The goal of this project is to provide Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test and deploy their applications. Features include source control, debugging, WEBrick servers, generator wizards, syntax highlighting, data tools and much much more.

The RadRails IDE is built on the Eclipse RCP, and includes plugins from RDT and Subclipse. The RadRails tools are also available as Eclipse plugins.

Uses RDT plus others, and a nice, clean install.

RDT is good, but...

[MarkWatson]

... because Ruby is a dynamic language it is more difficult for IDEs to autocomplete, etc.

I do most of my development in Java, so I mostly use IntelliJ (best Java IDE, IMHO). However, I also really like Eclipse because in one IDE you can code in Java, C++, Ruby, Python, etc.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[mordors9]

But then real men use assembly ;-) --- means I am kidding... lighten up.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[mctk]

I hard wire all of my applications.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[hutchike]

I agree. Auto-complete is the one thing that we could really do with here, but is sadly lacking. Sure I can press Ctrl+space and get a Ruby language list, but I really want to see methods available on the current object. This is not possible today. Having said that, RDT is WAY WAY better than the alternatives. Having installed Mondrian, Scite and FreeRide, RDT on Eclipse blows them all away. Regarding RadRails, yes it's nice but it's not a huge leap forwards from RDT - it just adds server start/stop in a new "Rails" perspective. Here's a toast to Ruby as the Web 2.0 language of choice for rapid and happy web development!

Re:RDT is good, but...

[gnuLNX]

I have not used eclipse, but I use KDevelop quite a bit. I supports quite a few languages natively. C/C++/Ruby/Python/Perl. It even has special QT projects for each of these languages.

My biggest gripe (and it is hardly a valid gripe) is that KDevelop moves to quickly. I do think the current version is quite stable tho.

I would welcome a comarison of the two by someone who has spent considerable time with both.

Thanks

Re:RDT is good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I suppose if you are an electircal engineer you probally would.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[zhiwenchong]

I don't see why it can't be done though.

IPython does autocompletion for Python methods and attributes on the command line.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[sammy baby]

Hand wire. Feh! I train the magic gnomes that power my computers personally!

Re:RDT is good, but...

[jma05]

IPython is an interpreter. PyDev is an IDE (Editor). In IPython, your program is already in run state. Not so in an editor. So it's comparing apples to oranges.

IPython is not the first to do this either. PythonWin for example has had auto-complete for ages in it's internal interpreter.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[Richard J Dale]

I haven't tried Eclipse, but KDevelop 3.2.x includes the following ruby features:

• Syntax highlighting (it uses Kate)
• Code folding
• Class Browser
• Shell window with irb
• Qt Designer support with ruby code generation
• Powerful debugger
• Several QtRuby and KDE Korundum project templates

Comparing features with RDT - it doesn't have a unit test front end, or an ri graphic front end yet. Apart from that they are pretty much equivalent as far as I can see.

Re:RDT is good, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Try Komodo and enjoy working autocomplete and other nifty stuff for Ruby, Python, Perl, and a number of other dynamic languages.

Ruby.....

[james_in_denver]

It rocks...... I'm using Ruby at work to parse millions of lines of source code across 4 different systems and link that back to literally hundreds of requirements documents. The end result is stored in a database and made available via "Ruby on Rails" . It's saved the client literally hundreds of hours of debugging and integration time, and the "documentation"? It never gets out of date... Just run the programs against the source code and document repositories nightly and everything is current.....

And Eclipse? simply the best development IDE available IMHO...... And all of that in only a few thousand lines of code.....

Re:Ruby.....

[bljohnson0]

IMHO Ruby seems to have a "quirky" syntax. I checked it out for a short period of time and was thinking about adding it to my list of programming languages. I just don't care for the syntax. I could care less about it being interpreted, etc, it's the syntax that's killing it for me. I come from a C/Perl/Java background, and Ruby just seems too different I can't tell whether it's work taking the time to learn or not.

But, that being said, I really like Eclipse and use it for my Java coding. Maybe I'll give Ruby another shot since I can play around with it in Eclipse.

Re:Ruby.....

[geniusj]

I come from a C/Perl/Java background, and Ruby just seems too different I can't tell whether it's work taking the time to learn or not.

Once you learn it, you'll find that it is very consistent throughout development. You don't need to worry about certain syntax not working in certain situations, etc. Language consistency is the main reason I use Ruby. If I don't know it, I can guess and be right 95% of the time. It's almost creepy.

That said, I'd have to imagine that closures are the main issue you have with Ruby's syntax, since that's really the only part of Ruby's syntax that differs from other scripting languages.

e.g.

1.upto(5) do |number|
    puts number
end
1
2
3
4
5

    Just know that closures are incredibly powerful and can be used to simplify a great deal of things. Don't let the use of |s turn you away.

Re:Ruby.....

[pivo]

I find it hard to believe that someone with a Perl background is complaining that Ruby has a quirky syntax. I think if you spend a little more time with Ruby you'll find that it has a nice, well thought-out syntax. I think you'll also come to think of Perl as the real quirky language.

Re:Ruby.....

[btobin]

IMHO Ruby seems to have a "quirky" syntax..I come from a C/Perl/Java background..

In other words, you've only ever learned one syntax. That's kind of sad.

Re:Ruby.....

[gtrubetskoy]

I find it hard to believe that someone with a Perl background is complaining that Ruby has a quirky syntax.

Heh... As someone with Python background, I definitely find Ruby syntax very quirky. My theory is that most Ruby users are people who started out with Perl and would never learn Python "because of the whitespace issue" (in truth they just didn't have a need, the time or what it takes to break old habits). Then as Python started becoming more and more popular, it became more and more difficult to admit that Python is indeed a really good language, while their language of choice was really getting tired by the minute. Then came about Ruby - now you can learn a language other than Perl or Java and yet not admit defeat to Python.

My humble advice is that if you made the jump from Perl (or Java) to Ruby, might as well go all the way and learn Python.

Re:Ruby.....

[geniusj]

Unfortunately, Python is not 100% OO, so I'd just be jumping from one inconsistent language to another one. Granted, it is much more consistent than Perl.

Re:Ruby.....

[Samus]

You know, I tried Python for a while. It really is nice with the builtin data structures and the slicing and dicing that you can do with sequences. The whitespace thing is kind of annoying. I like having {} or do end or begin end markers around my code blocks. I think it is one feature that they Python community should just give up on. It really is holding the language back. For example it can't easily be embedded into web pages (has it been truly done at all?) because of the whitespace issue. Just about all of the popular languages out there that can be used to generate web pages just use the language itself for embedding. I remember back in 2000 using the Python ASP integration on windows to embedd Python and it wasn't much fun. Another thing that bothered me about Python were the core modules. They just didn't seem consistent and as well structured as what Java uses. Sure there are weird things in weird places in Java but overall I prefer the class libraries available to Java over the Python ones.

I'm currently giving Ruby a shot implementing a little project and so far I find it ok but the syntax in Python or Java definitely seem cleaner. Having to use punctuation to help the compiler|interpreter figure out scope (think @'s in front of variables for object vars) is just plain lazyness on the part of the authors.

The last thing I'm having trouble getting over is the dynamic nature of the languages. Static typing seems to be such a nice warm cozy safety blanket that it is hard to give up. I see where it can be powerful and useful and allow you to take many shortcuts. In fact much of Rails would be impossible without the dyanamic typing and openness of the class structure, but I miss the static class definitions when working with my model objects. It gives me a weird feeling to have to look at the tables themselves so I can figure out what the attributes on my obects are. Yes I know DRY...

It'll be an interesting next few years to say the least. Maybe Ruby will be the next big thing or maybe something else will. I for one would like to see a revamped Python that took the things they did right and fixed the things they did wrong. Perl 6 anyone?

Re:Ruby.....

[pyrrhonist]

Once you learn it, you'll find that it is very consistent throughout development. You don't need to worry about certain syntax not working in certain situations, etc. Language consistency is the main reason I use Ruby. If I don't know it, I can guess and be right 95% of the time. It's almost creepy.

I totally agree. That, the clear documentation, and the familiar API (somewhat consistent with Java) are the three things that enabled me to learn it so fast.

I have a rule I use when learning a new language - I don't write "hello world" applications. I try to create an actual application that I would want to use. For Ruby, I decided to write a web server from scratch. This is a pretty good test of the language since it touches on parsing, network operations, file manipulation, and threading.

It only took 10 hours for me to learn Ruby and write a web server (which is fast for me, since I am a slow coder). I probably could have spent less time on it, but I created a separate module to do HTML output (using blocks and yield) so that I could provide fancy indexing for directories and server status pages. Basically, I was impressed enough with Ruby that I wanted to add more features onto my basic server.

Re:Ruby.....

[dtolton]

"1.upto(5) do |number|
        puts number
end
1
2
3
4
5
"

This is not an example of a closure, but an example of a block. Of course this is compounded by the fact that closures are enabled by blocks. You probably don't need to worry about closures in order to pick up Ruby, but if you don't know what they are, they are well worth learning. The C equavalent to this particular code is a for loop:

int i;
for (i = 1; i =5; ++i) {
    printf("%s", i)
} /* I believe this is syntactically correct, but I'm too lazy to compile it to check :-p */

Re:Ruby.....

[afd8856]

Python encourages good programming practices.
Among other, indentation, always document, short code modules, and best of all DO NOT EMBED CODE IN WEB TEMPLATES!
Take a look at ZPT (and possibly Kid) if you need to understand why you shouldn't do that. (they succesfully survive round tripping through HTML visual editing, generate only valid html, etc.)

Re:Ruby.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, it only took me 15 seconds to write a web-server in Ruby.

require 'webrick'

server = WEBrick::HTTPServer.new(
:Port => 2000,
:DocumentRoot => Dir::pwd + "/public"
)

trap("INT"){ server.shutdown }
server.start

Re:Ruby.....

[b4stard]

One could also argue that the code is an example of a ruby iterator. Either way, your C-code will segv due to the format string. s/%s/%d\\\\n/ and you'll be fine.

Re:Ruby.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Not as sad as your one legged hunchbacked mother.

Re:Ruby.....

[Samus]

I see no problem with embedding code that deals strictly with presentation. I wouldn't advocate putting business logic into a page and in fact would whack someone upside the head if I caught them doing that. In this day and age there is no excuse for it. Even php has templating capability. The real issue is having to learn a second language to do it. I'd rather learn a small api to do presentation than a whole new template language. A loop in an rhtml (rails) file is the same as it is in ruby just as a loop in asp and jsp is the same as their respective languages. Ok java tag libs can go a little too far sometimes but I don't have to use them if I don't want to.

What exactly in Python encourages short code and documentation? I would venture to say that it is more the community that encourages this practice and not the language itself. Indentation is an easy one as long as everyone on your team uses the same indentation scheme. I may look at Kid someday if I ever get the urge to look more deeply at Turbogears. Though I was kind of surprised and a bit disgusted to see in the demo video that to do a redirect the guy had to raise an exception. I don't see how exceptions as flow control can be considered a good practice.

Re:Ruby.....

[bensch128]

> Having to use punctuation to help the compiler|interpreter figure out scope (think @'s in front of variables for object vars) is just plain lazyness on the part of the authors.

Enforcing the use of scope operators to indicate scope was the best thing the Ruby authors did.
I'm using C++ at work now and I fucking hate the half-assed naming schemes (hungerian notation, m before all class variables) we have to use because C++ doesn't force you to use this->

I think in the future, all programming languages should enforce scoping as the correct naming scheme just
so we can be freed from half-assed schemes which don't work.

Ben

PS. Dynamic typing is great for quick and dirty data passing but most be backed up by unit testing for larger projects.
Otherwise, really weird bugs start biting you on the ass.

Nice work!

[cies]

Ruby indeed needs a good IDE to really shine!

In the article (10oct) you read about the next RDT release 0.6, which is out since 29nov:

****
0.6.0 Released (2005-09-29)
  Release 0.6.0 is out: read the news, check the documentation, download and enjoy, feedback very much appreciated!
****

more:

****
The new features of 0.6.0 are [...]:
Code Folding - Folding can be enabled for classes and methods
Outline view - more detailed, e.g. support for local variables
RI view - use Ruby's ri utility from an RDT view
Task tags - creates tasks for configurable keywords (like TODO, FIXME) in ruby comments
Editor improvements - Auto-complete of brackets, parens, and single/double quotes; better code-assist
Inspection shortcuts - Configurable shortcuts for frequently used inspections during a debug session, like showing all methods of an object, global constants and so on.
****

full changelog:
http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/nightlyBuild/Ch angelog.txt

cheers!
Cies Breijs

Nice plugins, a few problems installing on Breezy

[Hutchizon]

I've been using Eclipse with the RDT + Sublipse + RadRails plugins for a week or two on Windows. Its really quite nice. I didn't see an easy way to convert an existing Rails project into one that loads up nicely in the UI. I ended up creating a test project in Eclipse, taking that projects .project file and modifying it, then sticking it over in my existing project's directory. Load the .project file and voila, the IDE shows all the directors (M, V, C, etc). Very nice, and no surprise that .2 doesn't have a migration yet. I've been trying to live more in more in the other half of my dual-boot machine, especially now with Ubuntu's Breezy Badger release that has solved some of my issues such as notebook suspend. *Anyway*, when trying to install the RDT plugin, I am getting error messages. It all just worked in Windows and I was hoping for the same experience for Ubuntu.

jEdit's got one too...

[tcopeland]

...a Ruby plugin, that is; this one done by Rob McKinnon. It's a good piece of work, although of course all the "code completion is hard for dynamic languages" applies here as well.

For what it's worth, enscript works fine for doing Ruby syntax highlighting if that's all you need.

Complete HOWTO

[Dont tempt me]

There's a complete setup guide over at http://www.napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html

Steps through the RDT plugin, as well as many other extras, like connecting to a Database with Eclipse, running WEBrick, etc...

Good stuff...

RDT rocks.

[WWWWolf]

Here I was, happily writing stuff with XEmacs, but somehow, there was something missing from my coding stuff and things started to feel a bit wooden.

Weirdly enough, when I grabbed RDT, things started to look surprisingly bright and writing code was not that boring anymore. There are some emacsisms that I miss, but otherwise, this thing is really great. Eclipse was clearly made for bigger projects and it worked just fine when I got the crazy tendency to split my code across zillion little files! Wish XEmacs had this good file browser...

(And the silly little Ruby project I've worked on lately was Miller's Quest.)

Re:RDT rocks.

[jericho4.0]

Miller's Quest is the most fun I've had playing an RPG in years! Nice work.

trollish comment

[Ranger]

Is it me, or does Ruby seem to be the Amiga of programming languages? It's cool. It's powerful. And no one cares. Oh and it's bound to be just as successful.

Re:trollish comment

[WilliamSChips]

Ruby's pretty much a repeat of Smalltalk (Which is cooler, more powerful and has less people caring, and in people actually using it, was unsuccessful. But it did influence Java some) with "normal" syntax. Although I do hope Ruby overtakes that blastedly inconsistent language known as Perl.

Re:trollish comment

[Anonymous Coward]

First of all I think people do care. It seems more and more people are using it. And secondly even if it ends up that most don't care, it just doesn't matter. It's still being developed and is available on most major platforms. Just because it's not popular doesn't make it not worth learning, especially if accomplishing a task with ruby makes your job easier or more enjoyable.

Re:trollish comment

[JLyle]

I know you're just trolling (and being honest about it), but I just got back from the fifth annual Ruby Conference. The attendance at this year's conference was three times what it was at last year's, due in no small part to the success of Rails over the last year. The latest Rails book, Agile Web Development with Rails, is hovering around the number two spot on Amazon.com's list of popular "Computers & Internet" books. I'm told that they've sold some 20,000 copies of the book since it was published in July. So, apparently, someone cares...

Re:trollish comment

[meatball_mulligan]

Actually, I think Ruby might just be picking up some steam, thanks to Rails. David Heinemeier Hansson won the "Hacker of the Year" award at OSCON for Rails. Just about every week it seems like I see a new article in this magazine or that one about it. Ruby has surpassed Python in Japan. Who knows?

m.m.

Re:trollish comment

[jericho4.0]

Then Rails is Ruby's Video Toaster. Rails is pretty hot, and it doesn't seem to be slowing down.

Re:trollish comment

[Ranger]

I do hope Ruby overtakes that blastedly inconsistent language known as Perl.

Them's fightin' words, sorta. That blasted inconsistentcy is why I love Perl. It's the Swiss Army Chainsaw of programming languages.

Smalltalk!?! **choke** **gasp** **coke-coming-out-my-noise** It burnses! It burnses! Make it stop! I had to learn Objective-C (for WebObjects) which is a close to Smalltalk as I want to get. OK I'll take smalltalk over Java any day. Perl will always be the first programming language I fell in love with, though I'm pretty productive in PHP. I am not enamoured of any PHP based CMS. The PHP CMS community is seriously fragmented. I'm leaning towards Python/Zope/Plone paradigm. And yes, Ruby/Amiga comparison is valid. It engenders the same doomed devotion as the Amiga did.

Re:trollish comment

[leandrod]

Ruby has surpassed Python in Japan.

This proves nothing, Japan and software don't usually mix well outside of gaming and embedded gizmos.

I'd use Eclipe, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd use Eclipse if I could find a supported SFTP plugin. I do about 90% of my dev work on a remote machine, and if an IDE doesn't support SFTP then its, well, useless for me.

I know of 1 SFTP plugin (http://klomp.org/eclipse/org.klomp.eclipse.team.s ftp/), but I haven't gotten it to work with the last 2 releases of Eclipse.

Anyone know of anything that would do the trick?

Re:I'd use Eclipe, but...

[Anonymous Coward]

The version from the auto-installer inside eclipse works fine for 2.0. Just go to Help->Software Updates->New Remote Site and enter "http://klomp.org/eclipse/updates/". This will install the latest sftp support for 2.x.

Admittedly, it is very misleading if you search the web, as only the 1.x versions appear to be avaliable, and it looks like development is dead. The other annoying thing is I had to jump through hoops to get the updater to go through my corporate firewall (Found a proxy that didn't use NTLM authentication on one network, installed it under linux eclipse, found the installed files, zipped them up, emailed them to the other network with NTLM, unzipped them, off I went). Sometimes, a zip file sitting on a web site really is the best installer.

However, if you don't have firewall issues the auto-installer works just fine.

You owe to yourself to try this

[Wansu]

The Ruby Eclipse plugin is the best debugger I know of. It's been indespensble. The time you spend setting it up will pay off big.
 

Why use Eclipse?

[hobo sapiens]

Pfffttt! Eclipse is lame. I use jEdit. I have used Eclipse quite a bit, but it is just way too fat IMHO. jEdit can work for just about any language (including Ruby) and it is just a lot leaner. Try it! You'll like it!

Re:Why use Eclipse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Pfffttt! jEdit is lame. I use notepad.exe. I have used jEdit quite a bit, but it is just way too fat IMHO. notepad.exe can work for just about any language (including Java) and it is just a lot leaner. Try it! You'll like it!

Re:Why use Eclipse?

[hobo sapiens]

Haha, now, that's what I am talking about! You sir, are a real hacker.

Re:Why use Eclipse?

[FlameboyC11]

I've found this too. When you're running a shitty laptop, every bit of fat really shows. jEdit is actually quite nice, and I'm not trying to toot hobo_sapiens horn either.

Re:Why use Eclipse?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is the average /.er so lame nowadays? I remember when this site was read pretty much only by geeks...

the best thing about this

[cygnus]

is that it forces a bunch of Ruby devs to run a Java program to get their work done...

that must really roast their beans. har har...

Re:the best thing about this

[chaves]

The JVM and the J2SE class libraries are the most important contributions made by Sun under the Java technology umbrella. The Java language itself is irrelevant. Many people dislike the language syntax, and they have the right to do so. Syntax is a matter of taste - everybody should be able to program using the language they like the most (for the task at hand). But portability, interoperability, security, and other core features of the Java runtime are often underestimated.

People should stop fighting over language syntax and recognize that what we should be striving for is a feature-rich platform independent runtime, and that is what Java is in its essence. Groovy, Jython and JRuby are initiatives that recognize that.

Re:the best thing about this

[rubycodez]

nah, most Ruby coders are or were Java developers. I did java for five years. We just like Ruby better and feel it is much more powerful, beautiful and satisfying, as well as usually requiring one third or less the typing....

Re:the best thing about this

[nickos]

Mod parent up. This is what MS realised with .NET - many languages, one CLT.

A C# JVM bytecode compiler would be nice too...

Workflow

[Anonymous Coward]

I am more interested in seeing a workflow solution from FOSS given that topics like "Getting Started with Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation: A Developer Walkthrough" http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/building/wo rkflow/default.aspx?pull=/library/en-us/dnlong/htm l/WWFGetStart.asp are interesting.

My question: How much of your code is actual code and how much is glue that hooks together the different parts?

In other words, how much of your code is business logic and how much could be done via a workflow engine (i.e, no code)?

Does this support dynamic variable highlighting?

[Mustang Matt]

One cool features in Ecipse's native mode is when you click on a variable it highlights every other instance of that variable within your current source. I haven't seen any other IDE's do this and the PHPEclipse plugin doesn't do it either. Does this plugin for Ruby-on-rails support it?

Text editor vs. IDE

[Anonymous Coward]

Why use Eclipse? Why indeed. How about:
- best of breed Java development tools, including full refactoring support and full debugger
- team integration (comes with CVS support, other stuff can be added with plugins)
- awesome browsing support
- automatic incremental builds take place in the background. NEVER PRESS THE COMPILE BUTTON AGAIN. Just type some code, hit Save, and see the compile errors appear in the margin immediately. Since there's no need to stop and compile, you can Debug or Run your application at any time. (of course you can turn off auto builds if you prefer to build manually)
- RCP makes a good target platform for GUI apps. Use native widgets in your Java code. Develop Eclipse plugins in Eclipse.
- Useful frameworks like GEF (Graphical Editor Framework) and EMF (Eclipse Modeling Framework) can accelerate your development cycle.

I've been using Eclipse for Java development for about 3 years and I can't imagine writing Java code without it. Who wants to perform refactorings by hand, or debug with some crappy command-line debugger? Whether you're writing little hack utilities in Java or giant GUI apps, JDT just can't be beat.

who would have thunk

[Anonymous Coward]

Who would have thought the slashdot world would praise things like IDE's and plugins.

Nice Ruby OS X editor: TextMate

[5n3ak3rp1mp]

A pretty neat Ruby code editor on OS X is TextMate. Some powerful stuff in there if you lie somewhere between the vi/emacs camp and the notepad/bbedit camp...

Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[Refrozen]

I don't really understand. The syntax is disgusting, and it seems to offer nothing new/interesting, why the big huff?

Re:Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Snakes are SO last season. It's nothing but gemstones now, dahhhling, and they'll lose their lustre to cutlery eventually.

That's right. Spork++ - coming soon to an amazon near you.

Re:Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[TerrapinOrange]

Have you actually tried Ruby? I mean, gave it an honest to goodness chance.. say a dozen or so hours of coding and perhaps the first few chapters of a good reference book? I just find it really hard to believe than anyone who actually knew Ruby's syntax would call it disqusting. It is, by a fairly wide margin, the nicest language I've ever used. Everything is incredibly easy and intuitive. If I don't know how to do something, I can usually guess it on my first or second try, and it makes it so easy to write reusable, modular code that it's stupid not to, even for what appears to be a throwaway program.

Ruby is hugely productive. Pretty much everything I've ever wanted to do requires less code, less configuration, and simply less hassle than in every other language I've used.

Now, this is mostly evident when compairing to more traditional statically typed languages like Java and C#, but Ruby's has plenty to offer folks who already use agile languages like Python or Lisp. Ruby has an easy to use and powerful package managment system, Gems. An excellent build tool, Rake. RDoc, a powerful JavaDoc like documentation system. Rails, which is probably the most productive web devleopment platform on the planet. Watir, a web scripting system that makes functional and system testing a breeze. MouseHole, a really slick scriptable proxy. Two extremely well written, freely available books: the first edition of Programming Ruby, and Why's Poignant Guide. An extremely helpful user community. The list goes on and on.

Maybe you should be asking yourself why you dislike Ruby so much, rather than why everyone else likes it. That's not to say that everyone should like it as much as I do, but I suspect you're missing something important.

Re:Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[DJSpray]

I have made it something of a crusade to try out as many languages as possible and not pre-judge their usefulness and capabilities. I have recently been using Ruby very successfully for some small scripting projects. I've found in the process that, although there are some things about it that drive me crazy, for this kind of task (file filters, modeling some data structures with a test script built using RubyUnit, etc.) I like it far more than Perl or Python. As far as I'm concerned, it is the logical successor to Perl. This doesn't mean I think there is no room for improvement in scripting languages, but just that Ruby's advantages already make it so I never want to look at a Perl script again.

What I like about it:

- Being able to leave off unused parentheses and chain together method calls like a_string.chomp.each... allows putting together complex file filters really, really quickly!
- Nice use of iterators in just about every place it makes sense
- Flexible post-statement "if" and "unless"
- Faster than one might expect for a fully interpreted language
- Reasonably good display of syntax errors (better than some)
- Far more consistent syntax than Perl, but makes easy a lot of the same things that Perl makes easy
- Excellent regexp support
- Extensive library
- (Most of the time) "it just works" -- an awful lot of my code ran perfectly on the first try, even though I was a Ruby Nuby.
- "More than one way to do it"
- "Everything is an object"
- Duck typing
- Support for continuations

What I dislike about it:

- Gratuitous spelling of "elsif" (When switching languages a lot, it is really frustrating to have to constantly remember whether I need to use "else if," "elsif," or "elif"
- Syntax doesn't seem to lend itself well to a formal grammar; too much context-sensitivity in parsing
- The last time I looked at the source it was hideous pre-ANSI C implemented with horrifying preprocessor abuses; this may be fixed now.
- The closure syntax is awkward and seems limiting to writing in a truly functional style - I want to be able to pass functions around like any other object, make functions that receive multiple functions as parameters, etc., without extensive additional syntax. (Caveat: I am still learning Ruby's peculiarities, so some of this may be doable, and my difficulties may stem from surface syntax issues and the confusion over the ways it is different it is from, say, Scheme, Dylan, NewtonScript, Self, etc.)
- Conventions for spelling variable scopes such as globals are enforced rather than just conventions
- Not quite multi-paradigm enough for my taste (why can't I work with plain functions, for example, instead of everything's-a-method?)
- Support for methods on singletons didn't do what I expected (but maybe I misunderstood)
- No compilation to machine code or C
- Duck typing doesn't seem consistently applied in the libraries

Anyway... I am a big defender of the principle that one should know many programming languages and use the one best suited to a particular task. I also not truly an experienced Ruby programmer yet, but so far my experience has been pleasant enough that it makes me want to use it wherever it is appropriate.

Re:Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[logmaster]

--I want to be able to pass functions around like any other object
#Use Proc.new
p = Proc.new { } ; o.method( p )

--Not quite multi-paradigm enough for my taste (why can't I work with plain functions, for example, instead of everything's-a-method?)
# Works fine.

def hello()
    print "hello world\n"
end
hello

Re:Why is Ruby gaining such media attention?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby is hugely productive. Pretty much everything I've ever wanted to do requires less code, less configuration, and simply less hassle than in every other language I've used.

Ruby has come along at a time when there's a serious backlash against the complexity of Java. Ruby's simplicity is drawing endorsements from well-known Java gurus:
http://www.webservicessummit.com/Articles/MovingPa stJava.htm

MySQL

[Anonymous Coward]

Does anyone know how to get it to work with mysql? I have put the correct configuration in database.yml,it's not localhost. When I try to create a scaffold or start WEBrick it says it can't connect to database server. I can't find any database settings in eclipse so I don't know what else I have to do. Please help.

Debugger

[Anonymous Coward]

I like jEdit too.. but I found that a good debugger is very important to understand large projects. jEdit doesn't have a GOOD debugger.

Re:Nice plugins, a few problems installing on Bree

[Shawn is an Asshole]

Did you install a Sun version of Java? I have Breezy installed and it had gcj aliased as "java". When I tried to install Eclipse I got all kinds of errors. After realizing the problem and installing Java 1.5_05 it works flawlessly. Just make sure the real java is in the PATH before gcj.

Eclipse

[oldCoder]

I tried the Ruby plugin for eclipse and it was too hard to get things to work. It all went together okay but when I started to use it, the thing kept on asking me for pathnames and which workspace to use. I had no idea which workspace to use, I just wanted to edit and run a ruby file.

Also, it kept on giving me lists of errors I could not understand.

I went back to scite and jEdit. I'm thinking of going back to emacs, actually.

Re:Eclipse

[Samus]

Eclipse is a project based IDE not a plain old editor. If all you want is an editor then by all means pick up your favorite editor. If you want to work in a project mode then use an IDE like Eclipse.

Re:Does this support dynamic variable highlighting

[Anonymous Coward]

JBuilder has had that for a while now. What I find better is that it goes beyond just highlighting variables. For instance, showing which methods implement an interface or which method calls will this exception catch block handle.

Debugging Rails applications problematic

[spinfan]

After seeing this article, I followed the instructions from the referred page,
also the article at

http://www.napcs.com/howto/railsonwindows.html#_To c111133460

My real goal was to debug Ruby on Rails programs with the plugin.

In theory I was able to do it, but not very usefully. I found that even a very
simple Rails program kept throwing off uncaught exceptions which kept stopping the debugger.
I could press the 'Continue' button to resume, but I would have to step through about
15 exceptions before the browser would be updated.

If this was fixed, it would be a very powerful IDE.

Unless I was very quick hitting the keys, the browser would time out. Something
needs to be improved before this would be a useful tool. Either Rails has to
be cleaned up to stop throwing those exceptions, or the plugin would need an
option to ignore those exceptions, if they are indeed normal.