14

What IDEs can you suggest for developing Ruby on Rails applications on Ubuntu 12.10 or higher?

Features

  • Code completion
  • Syntax highlighting
  • Support for a rails project structure
  • Generators
  • Rakes
  • Debugging
Improve this question
0

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
12
+50

I'd recommend RubyMine.

It's by far the most intelligent Ruby and Rails IDE on the market. Some of the features:

  • Runs on Windows, macOS (OS X) or Linux
  • Intelligent Ruby Editor with completion, code snippets and automatic refactorings On-the-fly code analysis throughout the project tree with type inference and quick-fixes
  • Rails Models Diagram, Rails Project View and other specialized project/file views for faster overview & navigation
  • RSpec, Cucumber, Shoulda, MiniTest & Test::Unit coding assistance and GUI-based test runner
  • iOS development with RubyMotion
  • Web Development with all Ruby on Rails framework versions from 2.x to 4.x
  • Cutting-edge Ruby development stack support: Bundler, RVM, rbenv, pik, etc.
  • HTML, CSS and JavaScript editing with auto completion and refactorings. Plus CoffeeScript, HAML, SASS, and LESS
  • Zen coding snippets for productive HTML/CSS authoring
  • JavaScript/CoffeeScript debugger based on Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome
  • Ruby Debugger: Ruby/Rails applications and tests debugging in a easy-to-use interface even in Windows
  • Git, Subversion, Mercurial, Perforce and CVS integration with a unified UI
  • Diff, merge, history views and changelists for every supported VCS
  • Bundled Textmate, NetBeans, Eclipse & Emacs keyboard schemes, plus Vi/Vim emulation plugin

Downsides:

  • It's not always free. Being free for OSS projects and classrooms, they charge between $199 and $29 for a new license. Renewals are much cheaper, though.
  • You're obviously a Rubist, you might find the fact it is written in Java as downside (I hope you won't).
  • Some bugs here and there (nothing critical and they are getting fixed fast once reported).

New user advices:

  • Go through the Getting Started Guide
  • Set your familiar key mapping for an easy start (as I mentioned they bundle a bunch, others can be found on the net).

Look and Feel example: RubyMine

Improve this answer
8
  • I'm gonna try that. Any downsides? / Something a new user would trip on? Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 8:21
  • 1
    It also comes with a gem manager, and its Tools menu includes Rake and generators (to address specific points in the question). I actually prepared some screenshots of the generator support (among other things) because I planned to answer the question later today, but clearly somebody else agrees with my recommendation for RubyMine. :-D Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 15:29
  • 1
    @AngeloNeuschitzer Do play with RubyMine. I just downloaded a 30-day trial last night to play with, and I'm very impressed. (Disclosure: I'm a paying IntelliJ IDEA customer, so I've used JetBrains products for a while already.) Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 15:32
  • 1
    @ChrisJester-Young I actually downloaded it even before this answer was there to test it :) Currently I have trouble with some things, but lets see. - Would you support your screenshots to this answer to make it more awesome? Commented Feb 12, 2014 at 17:39
  • 1
    @AngeloNeuschitzer I've posted my own answer with the screenshots, because my answer contains some personal experiences with the product too, in line with this site's spirit. Commented Feb 16, 2014 at 16:30
3

JBaruch's answer is a pretty good fact sheet for RubyMine. I'd like to write an answer that talks about my own personal experiences with the product, in the few days that I've used it (yay for 30-day free trials), along with some of my screenshots.

First, a disclosure: I'm a paying customer of another JetBrains product, IntelliJ IDEA. There are a number of similarities between IDEA and RubyMine, so getting around RubyMine was easy enough for me.

Second, to address all the features required by the OP, here are some screenshots (these are all from a tiny project I wrote from scratch to test RubyMine features; it currently simply generates and shows a Minesweeper board, in case you're wondering what the code is about):

  1. Code completion and syntax highlighting:

    Code completion

  2. Support for Rails project structure:

    Rails support

  3. Generators:

    Generators

  4. Rake (and other Rails tools):

    Rails tools

  5. Debugging:

    Debugging

Finally, my personal experiences with the product:

  1. The code completion seems pretty intelligent (remembering that Ruby is a dynamic language and there are no type hints, so the IDE really has to do serious code analysis to figure out what methods' return type(s) are).

  2. There's a nice and comprehensive set of "inspections" (which are like code linters) to help you write clean code and avoid common bugs:

    Inspections

    Here's an example of an inspection in action:

    Inspection in action

  3. There's a handy Ruby gem manager, which can tell you what gems are available to install, as well as the versions you can pick:

    Ruby gem manager

    Unfortunately, it does not install every gem successfully, even ones that are required for core IDE functionality (such as the ruby-debug-ide gem required for RubyMine debugging to work correctly). You'd have to install such gems from the command line.

I'm sure I'll discover more things to comment on as I use RubyMine more. But based on my initial impressions and on other JetBrains products I've used, I highly recommend RubyMine for your needs and expect that you will enjoy it a lot.

Improve this answer

Start asking to get answers

Find the answer to your question by asking.

Ask question

Explore related questions

See similar questions with these tags.