I've been developing in Rails for 8 - 9 months and have yet to find a good
text editing framework for use on a Windows machine. I've heard bunches
about Textmate, and I've tried out Aptana for Eclipse and the standalone
RadRails but with poor results. Aptana locked up and died about as often as
I tried to open a file and radrails is no longer supported with new
features.
I've also recently tried my hand at RIDE-ME V1.0 but it's still in
development and has many bugs to be worked out.
Does anyone have a good suggestion for a Windows-based text editor? I'd
prefer easy server management within the app as well as quick searching
capabilities.
I tried out your suggestion and it is nice, fast, clean, and easy to use. I
like the quick buttons for server start, console, and cmd. But I don't know
if I can get along without search. That's pretty essential, at least in
projects I work on, for finding TODO comments.
Woops, I delved in to the app a little more and found if you open a file
within your project you are all of a sudden presented with global search.
Seems strange, but at least it gets me what I want. Again, thanks for the
suggestion, I'll keep testing it out.
I have been using ActiveState Komodo Edit 4.1 for a few months now, and
I have been pretty impressed. I went through the same process as yourself
looking for something good on windows. I use the free edition, I don't know
what it misses on the paid for edition, but the quality of the free version
makes a strong case for its upgrade. The free edition even has code complete
(it interprets on the fly - not bad for an editor).
I haven't tried it for Rails projects though. (Just lots of camping)
For Rails I used to use RoRED a lot.
On Windows the big Java IDEs are usually your best bet. The downside is
that you have to use a big Java IDE. RadRails used to get a lot of press,
but I have never liked the Ruby support in eclipse that it is based on. Its
probably improved a bit now, but I hear it has languished a bit despite
an early strong start.
NetBeans got long ago announced as the loser in the Java IDE wars, but
somebody forgot to tell the NetBeans team. The Ruby & Rails support in the
NB 6.0 prelease builds is getting a lot of press. I only glanced at it, but I
got an immediate sense of 'rightness' from it, I have been meaning to pursue
it since. Theres also a Ruby/Rails only version of it IIRC, where there is no
other Java/whatever support, which could give your RAM a break.
Finally, theres Ruby in STEEL, IIRC Ruby support in Visual Studio. I haven't
followed this much, but they are doing some serious features (code completion
etc.)
Both of these are excellent for Ruby and Rails projects. If you use jEdit, then make sure you download/install the Ruby plug-ins. This is done directly through the application itself (you don’t need to download and install them from a separate website). In addition, someone, somewhere create a whole bunch of Rails macros for jEdit that mirror the ones available in TextMate.
Netbeans 6.0 hasn't come out yet, but the prerelease builds are
amazing. As far as I know, on release it'll have the most ruby
refactoring tools of any editor out there.
Both NetBeans and Aptana (Aptana has taken over RadRails) are useful, and both have their drawbacks. I usually have both open at the same time, editing the same files.
Aptana/RadRails:
Subversion support is much better than NetBeans.
The test runner system is very useful, and NetBeans doesn’t have anything like it.
NetBeans:
subversion support on windows is poor (they depend on using external tools, and they don’t work with cygwin svn)
better code completion
much better debugging
the NetBeans team responds to bug reports very quickly
I use NetBeans for the debugger, and Aptana when I just want debug printfs.
I don’t really have much hope for anyone’s code completion in Ruby. Too many things are dynamic; the chances of doing full code completion without a running application are close to zero.