Ruby On OS X

Ruby 1.8.6 is fully supported in Mac OS X Leopard including Ruby on Rails, Mongrel, Capistrano, and many other popular Ruby gems (packages). For details, see the Ruby wiki at MacOS Forge.

Mac OS X Tiger is packaged with version 1.8.2 of Ruby, but, for those who haven’t upgraded to Leopard, there are a number of options for installing the latest version of Ruby. Locomotive is a nice choice if you are looking for something to get you up and running quickly for Rails development. Using MacPorts or Fink might be a little nicer for the more technically savvy.

On MacPorts, you can install Ruby with…

% port install ruby

Fink has a graphical interface (using Fink Commander) for installing Ruby.

Also, since OS X is based on Unix, downloading and installing from the source is just as easy and effective as the other solutions.

For a detailed look at installing Ruby (and Rails), Dan Benjamin’s excellent article Building Ruby, Rails, Subversion, Mongrel, and MySQL on Mac OS X will get you up and running very quickly.

Ruby On Linux

Depending on the distribution you are using, there are several ways to install Ruby. The first option is simply to download the source code and compile by hand. However, on some platforms, there are package management solutions that make installing Ruby extremely easy.

For example, on Debian or Ubuntu apt-get provides an easy and elegant solution:

% sudo apt-get install ruby irb rdoc

For irb and rdoc you will need to enable the universe repository.

Ruby Source Code

Installing from the source code is a great solution for when you are comfortable enough with your platform and perhaps need specific settings for your environment. It’s also a good solution in the event that there are no other premade packages for your platform.

• Ruby 1.8.6-p111 (md5: c36e011733a3a3be6f43ba27b7cd7485) Stable Version (recommended)
• Stable Snaphot This is tar’ed and gzip’ed file of the latest stable CVS. It should be better than the last stable release.
• Nightly Snaphot This is tar’ed and gzip’ed file of the latest CVS. It may contain unfixed problems.

For information about the Ruby Subversion repository, see our Ruby Core page.

Ruby on Windows

The Windows platform has several options for installing Ruby. The first option is simply installing the compiled binaries. The second option is to use the one-click installer. If you’re unsure about how to install Ruby, the one-click installer may be the best option for you. (In addition to Ruby, the one-click installer also comes with a bunch of additional libraries built in.)

• Ruby 1.8.6 One-Click Installer (md5: 00540689d1039964bc8d844b2b0c7db6) Stable version (recommended)
• Ruby 1.8.6 Binary (md5: 3ec2a8a34d5db1f09cc8cad3f8305c28) Stable version (recommended)
• Ruby 1.9.0 Binary (md5: 489ee1bcd72e97f50b38b64fb354e661) Developer version (experimental)

RadRails is an open source IDE for the Ruby on Rails framework.

Not yet using RadRails 1.0? It's free, feature-rich, and runs in Aptana Studio and Eclipse. Get it now.

RadRails 1.0 for Aptana Studio is the first major release of the RadRails environment since Aptana became home to the project in 2007. This latest release packs in great features to boost Ruby on Rails application development for beginners and advanced users alike.

Highlights Integrated Rails shell console Default-install and config of Ruby interpreter, database and debugger (Everything you need to get started fast) Code completion with type inferencing Code assist for Ruby, CSS, JS, and HTML inside RHTML files Type hierarchy view Go to declaration Call hierarchy Full implementation of RDT (Eclipse's Ruby Development Tools project) Integrated Profiler (Pro Version Only) Full Feature Comparison

What Developers Are Saying Even though there are now many IDEs that profess compatibility with Rails, Aptana/RadRails should still be a go-to editor for Rails development. -- Dr. Nic. Ruby on Rails Guru, Dr. Nic Academy. Since Aptana Studio is based on Eclipse, I can take advantage of the vast number of Eclipse plugins like Mylyn, the Bazaar plugin, GotoFile, QuantumDB, SQL Explorer, etc..., -- Scott Bronson, Web consultant, San Francisco. RadRails has quickly become a critical tool for our development. Of all the rails tools I have tried, including Netbeans, it's the best. Not only is it evolving at a maddening speed but the user support is one of the best I have met. -- Juan Alonso, Engineering Director, LaFlecha.net

And of course, RadRails extends Aptana Studio which provides additional state-of-the-art utilities for HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code editing and debugging.

Preview & Learn RadRails Intro Screencast Rails Shell Screencast Rails Debugging Screencast Ruby Type Hierarchy Screencast Feature Comparison Docs

Download Step 1: Download Aptana Studio Step 2: Add RadRails to Aptana Studio by following the Start Page instructions (Help > Aptana Studio Start Page...). View Screencast

Buy Pro Edition What's in Pro? Buy Aptana Studio Pro

Contribute Source Code Forums Live doc wiki Enhancement requests Bug reporting Bug fixes New features

 

Feature Comparison
General	RadRails	NetBeans	3rdRail
Price	Free	Free	$399
License Type	Open Source	Open Source	Commercial
Available Standalone or as Eclipse Plugin
Interpreter Support/Bundling
Bundled JRuby Interpreter
Interpreter Support	Ruby, JRuby, Rubinius	Ruby, JRuby	Ruby, JRuby
Scriptability/Extensibility
Scriptable via Ruby
Debugging / Profiling
Debugger	classic and ruby-debug for MRI; ruby-debug bundled with JRuby	classic and ruby-debug for MRI; ruby-debug bundled with JRuby
JavaScript Debugging
Profiler	(Pro)
Editors
HTML Editor
CSS Editor
JavaScript Editor
JSON Editor	(Pro)
SQL Editor
YML Editor
RHTML/ERb Editor
XML Editor
Ruby Editing
Code Completion
Type Inferencing
Ruby-specific search engine (Find usages)
Code analysis (warnings/errors/hints)
Type Hierarchy View
Call Hierarchy View
Mylyn Integration
Regular Expression Tester
Quick Outline
Spell Checking Support
Smart Indent
Mark Occurrences
Refactoring
Rename	(1)
Convert Local Variable to field
Encapsulate Field
Extract Method
Extract Constant
Inline Class
Inline Local Variable
Inline Method
Merge Class Parts (internal to file and external)
Move Field
Move Method
Push Down Method
Pull Up Method
Split Local Variable
Testing
Test::Unit view
AutoTest
RSpec support
Rails Specific Functionality
Integrated rails-specific "shell"
Log Tail View
Embedded browser

Wow, that's lots of features. Did we get it right? Send your feeback to info(at)aptana.com.

Notes: (Pro) Feature available in the Pro edition of Aptana Studio. (1) Handling of instance variables in RHTML mapping to controller instance variables is forthcoming.