Summary

A basic IDE who’s support for RubyOnRails is fairly slender (more like a 0.9 release) Offers basic syntax checking for Ruby, includes interactive debugging but it is unusably slow on this test system

Really rates as a slighly advanced text editor: Download Here

This is my first time at using an komodo for any language.

Test System

Dell Inspiron 8500, 1GB RAM, 2.4Ghz PIV, Windows XP Pro (SP1)

Notes

• Starts quickly, familiar IDE Interface, scans system for Ruby without issues (on Windows)
• Creating a Project from an existing Rails directory worked fine.
• When generating code with ‘ruby scripts/generate xxx’ the project directory doesn’t not automatically show the new code, you have to ‘import from directory’ once more for it to pick up code.
• Has ability to watch files for changes, useful for checking ‘development.log’, but it is unusably slow with a large file (4.5MB), also it does not interpret the colour coding esc chars in the file.
• Has syntax highlighting and syntax checking (missing comma’s, brackets) but no useful code completion. Does not suggest any methods.
• Remote and local debugging is incredibly slow, minutes will pass between starting debugger and reaching first breakpoint, next breakpoint takes just as long. Instructions for setting up remote and local debugging slightly incomplete and contains typos (See ‘Notes: Debugging setup below).
• Debugging contains usual features (watches, breakpoints, step into etc), but again, very, very slow
• Does not contain code formatting, refactoring, links to ruby documentation (besides help menu) or anything else that you might have come to expect from Java IDE’s such as Eclipse or IntelliJ

Notes: Debugging setup

Debugging worked fairly easily, only comments are that when local debugging you need to provide your c:\rails\yourapp in the Directory box AND load the script\server from c:\rails\yourapp

I was loading the script\server file from c:\rails\ and providing the directory as c:\rails\yourapp and just getting the default rails app turn up.

Remote debugging mentions that you need to provide a servername:port, where you get the port from is not mentioned in the ruby instructions (maybe it is mentioned elsewhere, I haven’t looked).

You can set the port explicity in ‘Edit’ | ‘Preferences’ | Debugger | ‘Listen for debug connections on port:’ or you can look at what port it currently is using by selecting ‘Debug’ | ‘Listener Status’

Hope this helps someone, I’d personally wait for version 4.0

Disagree? I’m happy to be corrected

Tuesday, January 17th, 2006 @ 8:01 pm RubyOnRails, Technology
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