

"Why netbeans' rails support is so creamingly good" - r7000
http://lifeonrails.org/2007/8/27/netbeans-the-best-ruby-on-rails-ide

======
mhartl
NetBeans looks great. Perhaps you can help me with something, though. Every
time I try to evaluate one of these spiffy, does-everything-but-brush-your-
teeth IDEs I go through the following process: (1) search for half an hour to
find exactly the right thing to download; (2) download, install, and run; (3)
now what???

In other words, I've found the documentation for fancy features to be rich,
but instructions for just getting started are piss poor. Particularly critical
is the lack of docs for step 3---how do I start or import a Rails project into
the IDE? I've tried Eclipse, Aptana, and NetBeans, and given up in despair
each time. I eventually figured it out for RadRails under Linux, but that was
only after much effort. (I've since switched to Mac/TextMate.)

Any help with the three steps above would be much appreciated. If anyone can
post a nice step-by-step guide to getting started, I might even switch to
NetBeans!

~~~
michaelneale
yeah its hard if you are not familiar with the IDE at hand. Its not unlike
say, setting up SLIME for CL when you are _gasp_ not an emacs user ;)

~~~
mhartl
Heh. I did set up SLIME for CL (in XEmacs), after like 8 attempts. I forget
how I eventually got it to work, but IIRC I cycled through several CL
implementations before cracking it. (SBCL didn't, alas, work with SLIME out of
the box.)

This brings up some advice for Arc adoption, in case it hasn't yet been
addressed: don't assume people will know (or will be willing to learn) Emacs.
And don't count on NetBeans support. :-)

~~~
michaelneale
you got it. Powerful tools require a large investment of your time. I was
never an emacs user but I am slowly changing that, as it seems to still be
relevant and you can get it anywhere.

------
kingnothing
I've been using the most recent stable dev releases for several months now and
love them.

<http://deadlock.netbeans.org/hudson/job/ruby/>

Also, the devs are incredibly quick to respond to bugs if you run in to a
problem.

------
twism
i posted something on this a couple hours ago... this is the only way anyone
should work on RoR

~~~
r7000
Yes, I saw you posted the screencast:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47886>

I'm going to watch that later and then give it a trial run. Did you try it
already?

~~~
twism
yup... setting up debugging is a bitch though

------
palish
Cool. I wish the editor could be modified to act like Vim. I'd switch to it in
a heartbeat.

~~~
ks
I think you can use vim as the default editor if you want

<http://externaleditor.netbeans.org/>

~~~
palish
Well, I meant full vim integration. The code completion looks wonderful. Vim
already provides syntax coloring and RoR itself provides svn integration
(append -c to script/generate or script/destroy commands).

The only reason I can see to use Netbeans is the great code completion and
auto-documentation. (Those _are_ huge reasons, though.)

Edit: Hmm.. _"We have been working closely with the owner of Vim and he has
incorporated our netbeans integration code into a vim 6.1 patch (patch number
366). Currently these sources are not available in a vim release."_

So I'm confused as to whether it does or it doesn't fully integrate with Vim.
I'll have to try it after work..

~~~
jamesbritt
There is a plugin for vi keyboard commands.

------
Alex3917
I really don't want to know the etymology of that one.

------
nanijoe
Is Netbeans free?

~~~
michaelneale
Yes. GPL.

