GUI IDE for Ruby

ruby-talk
1

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this info is crucial to me.

Thank you for your answers.

2

_/At 2005-11-29, tony <L@L.com> wrote\_

is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
info is crucial to me.

Tony, the only IDE for Ruby that I'm aware of is in KDevelop. It's part
of the KDE package which most-likely is available to your distro... I
can't imagine why it wouldn't be. I don't know if it can run under
another WM, but I can check if you'd like.

···

--
-slunky

3

Why do you need an IDE to develop a cross-platform GUI application?

···

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
info is crucial to me.

4

Komodo also has a Ruby IDE, you can also check out www.ruby-ide.com for
another one. I've only ever used KDevelop out of the three. Ruby doesn't
really need an IDE in my opinion, but whatever floats your boat.

···

--
-slunky

5

RadRails is meant for Rails development, but is great as even strictly a
Ruby IDE. With their latest version, it has quite a few features worth
checking out.

www.radrails.org

Warmest regards,
Nathan.

···

--------------------------------------------------------------
Nathaniel S. H. Brown Toll Free 1.877.4.INIMIT
Inimit Innovations Phone 604.724.6624
www.inimit.com Fax 604.444.9942

-----Original Message-----
From: tony [mailto:L@L.com]
Sent: November 28, 2005 4:17 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: GUI IDE for Ruby

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava
to start developing crossplatform gui applications (developed
on Linux) and this info is crucial to me.

Thank you for your answers.

6

The most complete toolkit with available IDE would be
qtruby (qt4 release nears, qt3 is stable). Use kdevelop with this, designer
app of qt embeds in kdevelop, making code and gui design easy because they
both hook together. Code generation or loading the ui files are available.

the second most complete toolkit with just an okay IDE would be
ruby-gnome2 (available in just ruby-gtk2, see sourceforge page)
with glade, you just load the glade generated files.

Hope this helps.. Qt is the most stable and advanced, depending on if you have
the guts to go GPL. If not, use ruby-gnome2

Tsume

···

On Tuesday 29 November 2005 09:17 am, tony wrote:

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
info is crucial to me.

Thank you for your answers.

7

Besides Komodo and RadRails that were previsouly mentions, there is
ArachnoRuby, RDT extensions for Eclipse, FreeRIDE, JEdit, and I'm sure
there's more I've left out:

  http://www.ruby-ide.com/ruby/ruby_ide_and_ruby_editor.php
  http://rubyeclipse.sourceforge.net/
  http://freeride.rubyforge.org/
  Ruby Editor Plugin for jEdit

Curt

···

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
info is crucial to me.

8

I've been looking at my options in this area also. So far wxruby and
visualwx are at the top of my list. wxruby seems pretty stable even
though it's considered beta. visualwx is alpha quality but seems to
work ok. The two combined are much simpler to configure and use then
anything else I have found. Actually I haven't found any other visual
IDE that runs on windows and uses a library that has native widgets.
If it exists I'd love to find it. fxruby looks like a close second
but frankly it's widgets are ugly on windows.

Chris

···

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
info is crucial to me.

Thank you for your answers.

9

Komodo 3.5 from ActiveState. Windows. Linux. OSX.

Kyle Heon
kheon@comcast.net

···

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Van Dyk [mailto:joevandyk@gmail.com]
Sent: Monday, November 28, 2005 7:28 PM
To: ruby-talk ML
Subject: Re: GUI IDE for Ruby

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

Hi all,
is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and
this info is crucial to me.

Why do you need an IDE to develop a cross-platform GUI application?

10

slunky wrote:

Ruby doesn't really need an IDE in my opinion, but whatever floats your boat.

Why do you think that it doesn't need an IDE?

11

Joe Van Dyk wrote:

Why do you need an IDE to develop a cross-platform GUI application?

I understand that you can write a complex graphical interface based application with pure ruby code, but it's quite a pain in the neck (you must tell by code the coordinate of each single widget and so on). That's also in part the reason why many people spend tons of cash on Visual Studio: you design the interface, and then you write the code to make it do something useful. Isn't it?

12

Nathaniel S. H. Brown wrote:

RadRails is meant for Rails development, but is great as even strictly a
Ruby IDE. With their latest version, it has quite a few features worth
checking out.

www.radrails.org

Warmest regards,
Nathan.

Nathan,
thanks for this advice. It looks so promising. How it comes that everything related somehow to rails becomes "gold" ?! :slight_smile:

13

Tsume wrote:

The most complete toolkit with available IDE would be
qtruby (qt4 release nears, qt3 is stable). Use kdevelop with this, designer
app of qt embeds in kdevelop, making code and gui design easy because they
both hook together. Code generation or loading the ui files are available.

the second most complete toolkit with just an okay IDE would be
ruby-gnome2 (available in just ruby-gtk2, see sourceforge page)
with glade, you just load the glade generated files.

Hope this helps.. Qt is the most stable and advanced, depending on if you have
the guts to go GPL. If not, use ruby-gnome2

Tsume

Another alternative worthy of note is Widestudio (www.widestudio.org).
I have checked it out to a certain degree and it appears to be a good
cross-platform solution. Windows, Mac, Linux, Linux Embedded, Solaris,
Windows CE/Pocket PC, etc. At first glance it doesn't appear to be as
appealing widget-wise as Qt or GTK but it is portable.

14

wxruby2 is very incomplete, wxruby doesn't work too well... sorry to burst the
enjoyment bubble.

You'll find these toolkits to work the best, and are most complete..

qtruby3 (no windows though) qtruby4 will but dont count on it soon.
ruby-gnome2(also ruby-gtk2) are the most complete.

qtruby has kdevelop possibilities
ruby-gtk2 has glade. might not be as powerful as designer for Qt, but the
application is decent to work with.

fxruby is just okay, no designer, plus it is unstable if you pass variables to
it which you aren't supposed to, leading in segfaults of ruby.

Tsume

···

On Wednesday 30 November 2005 07:49 am, snacktime wrote:

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
> is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
> developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
> info is crucial to me.
>
> Thank you for your answers.

I've been looking at my options in this area also. So far wxruby and
visualwx are at the top of my list. wxruby seems pretty stable even
though it's considered beta. visualwx is alpha quality but seems to
work ok. The two combined are much simpler to configure and use then
anything else I have found. Actually I haven't found any other visual
IDE that runs on windows and uses a library that has native widgets.
If it exists I'd love to find it. fxruby looks like a close second
but frankly it's widgets are ugly on windows.

Chris

15

Kyle Heon wrote:

Komodo 3.5 from ActiveState. Windows. Linux. OSX.

http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/?tn=1

Thanks Kyle. It looks nice but it's pricey.

16

Many rubyists do not use IDEs because there isn't a big need for the
'tools' IDE's generally offer. You're not compiling anything or
'building' applications so to speak, so in general, a set of rdoc, ri,
irb, rake, and rubygems are all you need.

I personally use vim / gvim with vim-ruby installed on OS X, Windows,
Debian/Ubuntu/Gentoo Linux, and FreeBSD.

Takes care of all my needs :slight_smile:

But if you're looking for a GUI designer, you can actually use the QT
Designer. This is explained in the Pragmatic Programmer's book on
Ruby QT

My 2 minute long experience with QT designer leads me to think if I'm
going to code QT at all, I'm going to do it by hand.

There is also a VisualStudio integration bridge out there somewhere,
though I have NO CLUE at all how that works.

For GUI's I generally use Tk or build a Rails application. I've also
build some using VisualStudio and C# and just piped in data from ruby
scripts...

You can also build very capable CLIs with HighLIne, if you are looking
for something that just works and is easy to write.

···

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

slunky wrote:
> Ruby doesn't
> really need an IDE in my opinion, but whatever floats your boat.

Why do you think that it doesn't need an IDE?

17

With Gtk and Tk, you don't use coordinates. You pack widgets into
containers and pack those containers into windows.

It's not terribly difficult, and it's a better approach than
pixel-oriented coordinate systems.

···

On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:

Joe Van Dyk wrote:
> Why do you need an IDE to develop a cross-platform GUI application?

I understand that you can write a complex graphical interface based
application with pure ruby code, but it's quite a pain in the neck (you
must tell by code the coordinate of each single widget and so on).
That's also in part the reason why many people spend tons of cash on
Visual Studio: you design the interface, and then you write the code to
make it do something useful. Isn't it?

18

Arachno Ruby is quite good also. It's still a work in progress but I love
it's debugger.

j.

···

On 11/29/05, gregarican <greg.kujawa@gmail.com> wrote:

Tsume wrote:

> The most complete toolkit with available IDE would be
> qtruby (qt4 release nears, qt3 is stable). Use kdevelop with this,
designer
> app of qt embeds in kdevelop, making code and gui design easy because
they
> both hook together. Code generation or loading the ui files are
available.
>
> the second most complete toolkit with just an okay IDE would be
> ruby-gnome2 (available in just ruby-gtk2, see sourceforge page)
> with glade, you just load the glade generated files.
>
>
> Hope this helps.. Qt is the most stable and advanced, depending on if
you have
> the guts to go GPL. If not, use ruby-gnome2
>
>
> Tsume

Another alternative worthy of note is Widestudio (www.widestudio.org).
I have checked it out to a certain degree and it appears to be a good
cross-platform solution. Windows, Mac, Linux, Linux Embedded, Solaris,
Windows CE/Pocket PC, etc. At first glance it doesn't appear to be as
appealing widget-wise as Qt or GTK but it is portable.

--
"Remember. Understand. Believe. Yield! -> http://ruby-lang.org"

Jeff Wood

19

Most definitely, it does one thing right, "gets the job done" Which is what
programming is about, not overzealous tactics, design, etc. There are pros
and cons to each of the toolkits mentioned. Just a programmers job to try
them all out to see for self.

Tsume

···

On Wednesday 30 November 2005 12:37 am, gregarican wrote:

Tsume wrote:
> The most complete toolkit with available IDE would be
> qtruby (qt4 release nears, qt3 is stable). Use kdevelop with this,
> designer app of qt embeds in kdevelop, making code and gui design easy
> because they both hook together. Code generation or loading the ui files
> are available.
>
> the second most complete toolkit with just an okay IDE would be
> ruby-gnome2 (available in just ruby-gtk2, see sourceforge page)
> with glade, you just load the glade generated files.
>
>
> Hope this helps.. Qt is the most stable and advanced, depending on if you
> have the guts to go GPL. If not, use ruby-gnome2
>
>
> Tsume

Another alternative worthy of note is Widestudio (www.widestudio.org).
I have checked it out to a certain degree and it appears to be a good
cross-platform solution. Windows, Mac, Linux, Linux Embedded, Solaris,
Windows CE/Pocket PC, etc. At first glance it doesn't appear to be as
appealing widget-wise as Qt or GTK but it is portable.

20

If it works well enough for the application at hand and has the
features needed, then whether it's 'incomplete' as a whole or has
problems in some areas really isn't all that important.

What matters is out of all the choices you have, what's the best
solution? In my case I need native widgets, I don't want to spend
hundreds of dollars on an IDE, and I need to create closed source
programs (bye bye Qt Designer). There really isn't much out there
given my requirements. At the same time i don't need that many
features, and wxruby seems to work just fine so far. That said, if I
run into issues with xwruby I might end up using wxperl or wxpython.
Just as long as I don't have to invest hundreds into MS dev tools
and can use a language I already know I really don't care that much.

Chris

···

On 11/29/05, Tsume <tsumeruby@tsumelabs.com> wrote:

On Wednesday 30 November 2005 07:49 am, snacktime wrote:
> On 11/28/05, tony <L@l.com> wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > is there a GUI IDE for Ruby? I have to decide on Ruby orJava to start
> > developing crossplatform gui applications (developed on Linux) and this
> > info is crucial to me.
> >
> > Thank you for your answers.
>
> I've been looking at my options in this area also. So far wxruby and
> visualwx are at the top of my list. wxruby seems pretty stable even
> though it's considered beta. visualwx is alpha quality but seems to
> work ok. The two combined are much simpler to configure and use then
> anything else I have found. Actually I haven't found any other visual
> IDE that runs on windows and uses a library that has native widgets.
> If it exists I'd love to find it. fxruby looks like a close second
> but frankly it's widgets are ugly on windows.
>
> Chris

wxruby2 is very incomplete, wxruby doesn't work too well... sorry to burst the
enjoyment bubble.