what is the best non-rails web/ruby development environment for windows?

[Edward]

So I want to develop ruby sites locally like I do PHP5 sites.
For PHP I use locally Apache to view and ZendPHPEclipse as my editor.

How do most of your develop non-rails ruby webs locally?
(I'll get into rails later, I want to get the basics of Ruby down
first.)
Is debugging possible?

Thanks,

Edward Tanguay
All my projects: http://www.tanguay.info

 

[Max Muermann]

So I want to develop ruby sites locally like I do PHP5 sites.
For PHP I use locally Apache to view and ZendPHPEclipse as my editor.

How do most of your develop non-rails ruby webs locally?

I think most people user Rails for Ruby web development. While using
Ruby without Rails to develope web apps is certainly possible, I would
not recommend it. Ruby is not like PHP in that respect - PHP was
originally designed as a perl preprocessor. Ruby is a very
comprehensive general-purpose programming language.

The RDT plugin for eclipse is pretty good. There's also RadRails,
which build on RDT and adds Railsy functionality.

(I'll get into rails later, I want to get the basics of Ruby down
first.)

That's certainly a good idea, but web development is probably not the
best way to do that.

Is debugging possible?

Yes. The debugger that ships with Ruby is slow, but there is the
ruby-debug gem, which speeds things up. It's a text-based debugger, at
the moment there are AFAIK no good free graphical debuggers available.

That said, you don't really need a graphical debugger for Ruby. I was
originally under the impression that I could not live without a
debugger, but after getting to grips with the language I have found
that it's just not necessary.

Cheers,
Max

 

[Huw Collingbourne]

the moment there are AFAIK no good free graphical debuggers available.

If you have Visual Studio 2005, you can download the free version of Ruby In
Steel which has a full suite of graphical debugging tools - breakpoints,
trace into/over, drag-and-drop watch variables, locals, autos, call stack,
integrated debug-and-eval console etc.

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne

http://www.sapphiresteel.com
Ruby Programming In Visual Studio 2005

 

[Ilan Berci]

How do most of your develop non-rails ruby webs locally?
(I'll get into rails later, I want to get the basics of Ruby down
first.)
Is debugging possible?

I believe that you may be interested in http://www.nitroproject.org/
and why's http://redhanded.hobix.com/bits/campingAMicroframework.html.
Both of which are "lighter" than rails and may be what you are looking
for.

Nitro offers a very fast startup and has cool videos that I found very
impr*ssive.

why's camping framework is all there on one page and is quite the
learning experience if you parse through it. It is one of the best
examples on how Ruby can express so much out of so little (and the site
is worth the visit just for the jokes alone)..

Hope this helps

p.s. The spam filter blocked me on impr*ssive, please replace the "*"
with an "e" for your reading pleasure..

ilan

 

[David Vallner]

p.s. The spam filter blocked me on impr*ssive, please replace the "*"
with an "e" for your reading pleasure..

*blink*

It's final. The world is insane. Time to make a "The Ende Ys Neare"
sandwich board.

David Vallner

 

[James Britt]

I believe that you may be interested in http://www.nitroproject.org/
and why's http://redhanded.hobix.com/bits/campingAMicroframework.html.
Both of which are "lighter" than rails and may be what you are looking
for.

Nitro offers a very fast startup and has cool videos that I found very
impr*ssive.

why's camping framework is all there on one page and is quite the
learning experience if you parse through it. It is one of the best
examples on how Ruby can express so much out of so little (and the site
is worth the visit just for the jokes alone)..

Hope this helps

Also look for IOWA and Cerise.

http://enigo.com/projects/iowa/tutorial/what_is_it.html
http://cerise.rubyforge.org/

--
James Britt

"A language that doesn't affect the way you think about programming is
not worth knowing."
- A. Perlis

 

[John Gabriele]

So I want to develop ruby sites locally like I do PHP5 sites.
For PHP I use locally Apache to view and ZendPHPEclipse as my editor.

How do most of your develop non-rails ruby webs locally?

I haven't really used it much, but you might look into erb (or eruby).
It works like php or jsp: you write html containing embedded Ruby code
(an .rhtml file), and when you pass it through erb, the code gets
executed while the .rhtml file is being processed. A standard Ruby
install comes with erb. See the PickAxe for documentation on it.

erb: Comes with Ruby, written in Ruby.
eruby: Written in C (http://www.modruby.net/en/index.rbx/eruby/whatis.html).

---John

 

[James Britt]

So I want to develop ruby sites locally like I do PHP5 sites.
For PHP I use locally Apache to view and ZendPHPEclipse as my editor.

How do most of your develop non-rails ruby webs locally?

Nitro, or, for simpler stuff, Catapult.

(I'll get into rails later, I want to get the basics of Ruby down
first.)

There are some interesting presumptions in that statement.




--
James Britt

"The use of anthropomorphic terminology when dealing with
computing systems is a symptom of professional immaturity."
- Edsger W. Dijkstra

 

[Jeff Cohen]

If you have Visual Studio 2005, you can download the free version of
Ruby In
Steel which has a full suite of graphical debugging tools - breakpoints,
trace into/over, drag-and-drop watch variables, locals, autos, call
stack,
integrated debug-and-eval console etc.

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne

Huw, it sure would be nice if you contributed meaningfully to this list,
at least once in a while, instead of just advertising on it.

If not, we should make you put [ADV] on all your subject lines.

Jeff

 

[Logan Capaldo]

If you have Visual Studio 2005, you can download the free version of
Ruby In
Steel which has a full suite of graphical debugging tools - breakpoints,
trace into/over, drag-and-drop watch variables, locals, autos, call
stack,
integrated debug-and-eval console etc.

best wishes
Huw Collingbourne

Huw, it sure would be nice if you contributed meaningfully to this list,
at least once in a while, instead of just advertising on it.

If not, we should make you put [ADV] on all your subject lines.

Jeff

I don't think that's really fair. The poster was looking for a graphical
debugger, Huw has his Visual Studio integration for ruby (which gives
you a graphical debugger) and pointed it out as an option. Huw isn't
selling anything, and he doesn't spam the list with "Ruby In Steel!!!"
either. If you really think his occasional advocacy of his (free as in
beer)
software is so bad, you can always just killfile him.

 

[William Crawford]

I don't think that's really fair. The poster was looking for a graphical
debugger, Huw has his Visual Studio integration for ruby (which gives

I have to agree, here. While I normally despise people advertising
stuff on mailing lists, this appears to be simply an answer to the
question.

I must say, though, that it somehow just feels 'wrong' to sell tools
that help with open source projects. (Like Ruby.) Even if there's a
'free version'. I fully realize that good software is hard to write and
people must eat and all that... It just doesn't feel right to me.

 

[Jeff Cohen]

I don't think that's really fair. The poster was looking for a graphical
debugger, Huw has his Visual Studio integration for ruby (which gives
you a graphical debugger) and pointed it out as an option.

Point taken, Logan. It's just that the only posts I've *ever* seen from
Huw are links to his product. I think he *is* selling something, it
happens to be a Ruby tool.

I'm not at all against occasional advocacy at all - in fact it's one of
the good things about this kind of list, I've found good resources
through it and people have come to my blog through it, too. But I just
think there's a difference between being a *part* of the community (like
I know you are), and simply *using* the community.

But if I sounded too harsh in my previous email, I do apologize.

Thanks,
Jeff

 

[Stephen Kellett]

'free version'. I fully realize that good software is hard to write and
people must eat and all that... It just doesn't feel right to me.

I thought some people felt this way. I don't understand it. Is it OK to
make your living using open source languages but not to make your living
supporting open source languages? Surely those doing the latter are
potentially helping those doing the former?

Paying for a commercial tool such as Ruby In Steel is simply paying for
a tool that makes you more productive at your work. That is no different
to choosing a Mac to do your work rather than buying a bare bones PC and
installing Linux on it, or buying a stainless steel spade to dig a
garden. Those that choose the Mac think it will make them more
productive than the Windows/Linux option. The Mac is a proprietary box
with a lot of, but not all, open source software.

Finally, if you want to get the mythical "pointy haired boss" that works
for Big Enterprise Inc. to sign up for Ruby and/or RoR they are going to
want to see commercial tool support.

Stephen
I'm reliably informed that stainless steel spades are a lot easier to
use than ordinary ones. Thus, more productive.

 

[William Crawford]

I thought some people felt this way. I don't understand it. Is it OK to
make your living using open source languages but not to make your living
supporting open source languages? Surely those doing the latter are
potentially helping those doing the former?

I think it's simply an idealism problem. There's nothing logically
wrong with it, I just never felt it was 'right'. If I could put it in
words better, I would.