The blog of Tobin

Tobins nerd blog on .NET, Software, Tech and Nice Shiny Gadgets.

Monday, January 09, 2006

Windows Ruby On Rails IDEs and Text Editors

I was just reading about how the core Rails team love their Macs and the TextMate editor. Since I personally chose M$ Windows as my developmetn platform, so was interested to read about the comments left by other Windows users who have their own favourite editors.

For your pleasure, here's a summary of those Windows editors:

PSPad
Freeware. Positive feedback on this one since it can be set up to look a little like TextMate. Apparently it has a file explorer panel that will show the TortoiseSVN context menus. Light memory footprint, bags of features including file compare, code helper etc.

RubyEclipse
Open Source. SVN integration. Debugger, code completion (albeit a touch buggy) and a test runner. Uses up about 51MB of ram so a touch on the heavy side.

RadRails
Open Source. Promising reports from users. I've used earlier versions and it was very good. A few bugs and the memory footprint (45MB+) caused me to stop using it, but I'll certainly try it again. Features include SVN integration, WeBrick runner, syntax highlighting, code assist etc...

XEmacs
Open Source. Loads of developers love Emacs, although it comes with a steep learning curve. Apparently it does everything under the sun. I do have plans to learn this tool one day...

TextPad
The text editor I use the most. It's great, light weight and has tons of features. If you dig around the site you'll find some ruby syntax files (and hundrends of others)

[Getting tired now!... so sorry it the descriptions start getting naff! Here's some more to check out]

Scite
Open Source. A small and well loved editor!

UltraEdit
Commercial License, but looks good and users always give good reviews.

Feel free to leave your comments or mention any I've missed...