+1 for textmate on OSX
+1 for gedit on linux (I run ubuntu as it happens).
I don’t use either sqlite or mysql, but postgres. on both osx and linux. (The deployment environment is CentOS 5.2, passenger and postgres.)
Cheers–
Charles
I enjoyed Aptana for a while, but I've recently switched to NetBeans and have been very impressed. The autocomplete SQL bits are to die for and the method name refactoring is impressive.
http://jdwyah.blogspot.com/2008/12/netbeans-65-vs-aptana-radrails.html http://jdwyah.blogspot.com/2008/12/top-17-netbeans-ruby-and-rails-keyboard.html
-j
I use Cygwin (basically a linux command line environment that runs on windows) + e (a windows Textmate clone, including textmate bundles) on a windows machine.
E (http://www.e-texteditor.com) is every bit as good as Textmate, and under constant development. Free trial, but $34.95 for a lifetime license, which is very worth it as it's cheaper than buying a Mac). Rails and other applicable bundles include snippets of code, syntax highlighting, and macros that turn Textmate/e into something that comes pretty close to being a full IDE without all the heaviness and opacity of an IDE. I have tried Vim a couple of times, but the learning curve is too steep and I always give up. Textmate/e looks enough like a regular text editor to let you jump in with both feet with no experience, but offers a lot of power and versatility to be discovered as you progress.
E actually includes Cygwin (http://http://www.cygwin.com/) as part of its install, which is how I got started with it. Since then I've found it's easier to do your own install of Cygwin. You can re-run setup.exe (found at their website, above) over and over again to add packages such as ruby, gems, libssh, git, imagemagick, etc. as you figure out you need them by just clicking a checkbox. It's a little confusing at first, but actually really easy once you get the hang of it.
One of the simple things that makes using Cygwin instead of native Ruby on windows nice is that you don't have to type ruby over and over again, which makes following along with tutorials and examples online much easier (i.e. "script/server" instead of "ruby script/server"). Also, I find that Git on Cygwin is much more reliable than the Windows port of Git (although I haven't tried in a while, and I'm sure it's gotten better). As you get into Rails, you'll eventually find Git necessary, so this is something to consider and actually a valid argument against some of the IDEs with strictly SVN integration. Oh, and ssh integration into the command line is much easier, too.
Hope all this helps, and good luck. Rails is easy to get interested in, but hard to master, because it's such a moving target.
--dhc--
Deepak wrote:
@Phlip, I can work almost exclusively with just a keyboard in TextMate. There is a keyboard shortcut for just about anything you can do with a mouse.
Run a batch of tests. (Ideally that should be 1 keystroke, but sometimes you must rotate back to the test tab first.)
Now get some error spew. To ignore it and keep typing, you must use <Splat+Backtick> to go from the spew window to the editor.
Alternately, try to select one line of spew and go to its file and line number, with the keyboard.
I use TextMate all day - hence the venting - and muscle-memory does indeed help me forget all its glitches and irritations...
