Rails IDE: I can't imagine why some people keep promoting Aptana

In a post on borland.public.3rdrail.ide, Joe McGlyn, Product Development Manager at CodeGear made this comment in response to one of my post.

Joe :
I've spent the past few days trying to use RadRails (the newest M7 from > Aptana). I'm certainly strongly biased toward 3rdRail

CCH: This is to be expected, no worries :-)>

Joe:
but I'm reasonably objective too. If someone points out a bug or >shortcoming in 3rdRail that is valid I'm inclined to agree. Example: Diego's questions about our debugger -- it's weak. Got it, we'll have something that will rock in our December update.

CCH: I have noticed that in your response to my posts. That's why I respect you.

Joe : I can't imagine why some people keep promoting Aptana.

CCH: I think they promote RdRails rather than AptanaBTW, I will start to compile from the various posts why they do that ...and post it on my Rails Blog.

Joe : First, code completion: Method completion fails with a null pointer exception EVERYWHERE. I created a new project, re-installed the IDE, made sure the paths to the Ruby interp. and Rails + Rake commands were set right and it still fails everywhere. I've tried simple cases like "self." in controllers and actions, and modelname. in views, they all fail.

CCH:Just type self.+ctrl+space and a list was displayed (with no errors)Please do not be offended but did you install properly. There is an article on my blog "Rails...Rails...Rails"at http://cch4rails.blogspot.com/ which went live only yesterday and yes 3rdRail is also promoted.

Joe: The usage model is weak. Having to go to a combo box on a tabbed pane is lame. Having separate panes for installing a plugin

CCH: I agree on the inflexibility of installing plugins from unregistered sources vs. running a rake taskcch: I like the Rake Tasks Tab as I find it very convenientvs. running a generator is really week.

CCH: I prefer 3rdRail's Model wizard but the generate tab does have a destroy option which can roll back a controller/model which was requested in the 3rdRail FieldTest but I am not sure whether this has been implemented

Joe : It's a poor usage model, way less effective than working from the OS command line. There also isn't a keystroke to get to these magic views so everything is mouse-based.

CCH: This has not bothered me at all :-)>

Joe :Never mind that the "generator" combo box is buggy (after a bit of usage it's empty and I have to re-start)

CCH: I also find this mildly annoying but you do not have to restart, just click the Refresh icon on the top LH corner of the Generator Tab

Joe : The "gem manager" doesn't have any way I can find to install a plugin (install is always greyed out). I can't install a gem from a specific URL or svn tag (so, for example, it's useless for getting the Rails 2.0 > preview release) I can't add additional repositories to install gems from. Like most of the UI it ends up being a lot less useful than the command line.

CCH: I have just done that whilst installing the ibRuby Gem :-)See my latest article on Interbase at "Rails...Rails..Rails"

Joe : At first glance the debugger seems promising, and they have a list of refactorings, although most don't look that useful for Rails development.

Based on my research on comments made in popular RoR-related groups, this why some people keep promoting Aptana radrails

1) Tim Harper (Project Member : Active Scaffold) , 30th Sept 2007

Lemme chime in here and say I love aptana radrails.

I tried 3rdRail, and it felt "clunky". The code complete is excellent in it, but it's also pretty slow.

Aptana's code complete, go to declaration, combined with eclipse's textual complete are great enough for me.

Plus, radrails gives you a neat little tool for running unit tests that kicks the pants off running them in a console window

http://groups.google.com/group/activescaffold/browse_thread/thread/afed31fe981b6fe6/30e6785209ce5c73#30e6785209ce5c73

2. Josh

So it was definitely a ruby version issue. For some reason I was still running verion 1.8.2. I just upgraded to 1.8.6 and adjusting the aptana to work with it and now its working beautifully.

I'm willing to bet the other guy with the mac is running an older version as well.
http://groups.google.com/group/activescaffold/browse_thread/thread/9dba7977c325e9f0/95ce778341d5c154?lnk=gst&q=Aptana&rnum=14#


3) Patrick Aljord (8th March 2007)


RadRails is the best free IDE out there for RubyOnRails development and it's easy for companies to integrate it into their development platforms as it it's based on Eclipse.
http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/73dd6d73752aa09b/59504f9e3488b88c?lnk=gst&q=radrails&rnum=3#59504f9e3488b88c


4) Chris Bloom (29th September 2007)


I'm using RadRails since I can't spring $2049 for TextMate (and accompanying Mac). I've also tested the "e" editor, and otherwise have used EditPlus.

RadRails is a nice balance of a compact work space, console/logger, and syntax hilighter. I also like its Auto-completion functionality, but it's anywhere from complete OR consistent. And it's preferences panel leaves much to be desired. Then again, it is still a beta release so you have to take some of those problems in context. I look forward to future releases.

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/fc4ec10f4767e4aa/0cf12c2fd2e323e9?q=radrails&lnk=nl&

5) John Lane (24th Sept 2007)


Hmm, I'd never heard of 3rdRail so I just checked it out: it appears to be a commercial product.

I personally use Aptana and, yes it has its issues but I think it's better to support an open source initiative with a donation than walk off to a close source solution.

However, if 3rdRail is streets ahead of Aptana then it may be worth paying for. So, what does it give that Aptana doesn't

6) Dr Nic (6th Nov 2006)

RadRails is a wonderful IDE for developing Rails/Ruby, and supports a similar auto-completion mechanism to TextMate's snippets, called templates. You activate them by typing a portion of the template name, and pressing CTRL-SPACE.

But RadRails doesn't come with many templates for Rails development.
I've just finished porting all the TextMate snippets across to RadRails - about 250 of them. I hope they are useful to other RadRails developers!
http://drnicwilliams.com/2006/11/06/post-halloween-radrails-trick-all-textmate-snippets-available/
Nic

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/9dbdeb357234c895/a1f35635bb6441fb?lnk=gst&q=radrails&rnum=23#a1f35635bb6441fb


7) Jay Levitt (1st Oct 2007)

integration support. Both RadRails and 3rdRail use the Subclipse plugin (though I suppose either could be made to use Subversive instead), so you'll see no differences between them.

I'm fairly happy with Subclipse; it's a bit finicky, and there are some cases (reverting, especially) where it's much slower than the command line, but the integration with the core Eclipse feature set is really nice - the ability to see in your project which files need updating, the Synchronize mode, and especially Mylyn's ability to automatically create separate changesets for each of your to-do tasks. Two of my favorite features are the Eclipse Compare Editor graphical merge view and the "Quick Diff" annotation bar[2] (which colors the line-number field for each line based on revision number and author, making it easy to find change groups).

The Subclipse maintainer is also on the core Subversion team, so I'd expect Subclipse to have terrific support for the cool new upcoming features in 1.5, like first-class changesets and merge tracking. In fact, he's blogged about a GUI merge-tracking client he's been working on[3].

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyonrails-talk/browse_thread/thread/be1f7ce2af0a5f18/1b0e136ee6b6adb1?lnk=gst&q=radrails&rnum=60#1b0e136ee6b6adb1