NetBeans+Ruby Demos

Roman has created two excellent demos of the new NetBeans + Ruby support. The first one shows Rails support, the second gets into editing. Let me me point out that until now, my focus has been on editing - so the Rails support is very preliminary. The interesting features are in the editing area, but as the Rails demo shows, if you're building a Rails application you should be able to get your work done. (There is an open bug pertaining to process management - launched Ruby processes aren't always killed by the IDE, so keep an eye on your process list for older processes. Yes, it will be fixed!) Here's a quick hint, since it's not really obvious from the IDE: Use Shift F6 early and often. It "runs" the current file. For a unit test, that will run the tests. In a Rails app, it will open the browser on the "relevant" URL. For example, if you're editing a controller, or a view, or a helper, it will show the associated view. I recently added a new feature to the editor you can play with: Smart Selection. Press Ctrl-Shift-Up/Down (on the Mac, Command-Shift up/down). It will select progressively larger code blocks based on the parse tree. Within a comment, it first selects the line, then the whole comment block. Finally, I just integrated a Ruby Gem Manager (available from the Tools menu). This lets you easily see which Ruby gems you have installed, and more importantly upgrade them or install new ones. This assumes th...

Date: March, 05 2007
Url: http://blogs.sun.com/tor/entry/netbeans_ruby_demos

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