Gedit

So after playing around with Gedit for a while, I'm loving it. It's super fast and there are so many nice plugins to make it very similar to an IDE. There are some things that aren't present, such as refactoring, but that never worked properly in RadRails anyways!

Before, I mentioned that there was no SVN or debugging support. As I continue to develop using Gedit, I have not encountered any problems with this. I'm currently using SVN from the terminal and it's perfectly fine. Lucky I've had experience with using CVS in the terminal ;) Also, I installed a graphical diff program called Meld so that I don't have to look through the classic diff. I haven't had to do too much diffing, so I can't say too much about it.

As for debugging, I realized that for RadRails, I was already using ruby-debug, which runs straight off the terminal! So far, for what little debugging that I have had to do, I found the terminal easier to work with. It requires a bit more typing though (compared to the mouse clicking in RadRails). However, it works... unlike RadRails. The debugger in RadRails was very unpredictable and I could never access the variables without some sort of error popping up. It was so annoying! I'm quite happy with the terminal, so for now, I'm sticking with it.

Apparently, there are new plugins still being developed for Gedit as it gets more popular. Perhaps someone, in time, will come out with an SVN plugin or a debugger plugin. We'll just have to wait and see ;)

In the meantime, I'm super happy with my current setup. There are little things here and there that are bugging me, such as when I hit the home button, it jumps to the beginning of the line, rather than the beginning of the words. I'm hoping there's a configuration that I just haven't found yet.

After playing with it some more, I'll post up the plugins I have installed.


W

Textmate: Ubuntu style!

If you've ever watched any railscasts, most of them use something called Textmate to edit their files on a Mac. Apparently, it's suppose to be really good.

Well, recently, I've been getting really fed up with Aptana and RadRails. There are lots of things that bug me, like the wait time to save a file and especially the wait time to copy/paste things. It's just horrible. Furthermore, RadRails decides to crap out on me every so often. There are so many errors in the background that I run out of memory. So far, there doesn't seem to be a fix.

Enough of that... I'm moving on to better things, like a Textmate clone: a revved up version of Gedit! Apparently, you can easily make Gedit behave very similarly to Textmate! I followed this guide and so far, everything is smooth.

I haven't tried developing yet. I just installed everything. I'll let you guys know how it goes... but I'm anticipating I'll like this more than RadRails. Only downside is the loss of the SVN plugin and a debugger... I wonder...


W

Eclipse: To Upper/Lower case

Ever wanted to highlight a word and change everything to upper/lower case in eclipse?

Upper: CTRL + SHIFT + x
Lower: CTRL + SHIRT + y

Enjoy!


W

Auto Insertion Templates

I recently found a wonderful little tool in Aptana RadRails. The IDE provides a way for auto inserts using templates! This means you can type shortcut keywords, hit ctrl + space, and the corresponding templates will show up for you to choose from.

Window > Preferences > Ruby > Editor > Templates

is where you will find all the defined templates. This comes in handy when you want to customize the already installed set of templates, or feel like creating your own. It is very easy to create your own templates by looking at some of the examples already in the list.

This should allow you to develop your application much more quickly. Happy coding!


W

RadRails: Data Perspective

So I tried using this new perspective that comes with RadRails. It allows you to view your database in Eclipse and allows for SQL queries and executions.

However, I was running into some problems with my database.yml file. It kept giving me an error about invalid YAML syntax. However, RoR connects perfectly fine with it. I finally figured out that the Data Perspective doesn't like eRb.

I had previously DRYed up our database.yml by specifying our login information in one place, and then attaching it to the end of the hash for each database. However, the Data Perspective doesn't recognize this type of syntax and reports an error. After reverting our database.yml to its original form, the Data Perspective came to life.

Hope this helps anyone else running into the same problem.


W

Aptana + RadRails

WOW! Screw my previous environment setup... this new one rules! A combination of Aptana and RadRails, both as plugins to Eclipse rocks! Everything is integrated by installing just 2 plugins.

I haven't fooled around too much with Aptana yet, but there are many features supporting frontend development.

RadRails just blows me away! Everything is integrated into this little baby here. Features including generation of controllers, models, etc, rake commands, unit tests, database views... the list goes on. If you were to set up an IDE for RoR, this combination is the one you want. Try it out! I'm still exploring and I'm already blown off my feet!

Get it here:

http://www.aptana.com/download_rails_rdt.php

and follow the RadRails section in their documentation wiki:

http://www.aptana.com/docs/index.php/Main_Page

Enjoy!

W