Ruby In Steel Developer - Overview

Fast debugging, Ruby-aware editing, analytical IntelliSense and a drag and drop visual design environment for Ruby On Rails

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Also, see: Ruby In Steel Text Edition Overview

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How Is Ruby In Steel Developer Different?

The entire design and implementation of Ruby In Steel is guided by three principles:

 Speed
If you’ve used other Ruby editors and IDEs, you are probably used to the idea that things happen slowly. Not so with Ruby In Steel Developer. Code completion appears almost instantly. And our exclusive ‘Cylon’ debugger is really, really fast!

 Accuracy
IntelliSense doesn’t merely use lookup lists. Ruby In Steel analyzes and interprets your code while it is being written to infer information on objects, classes, methods and mixins. The Cylon debugger lets you drill down inside complex data structures to show all the internal details.

 Innovation
Ruby In Steel Developer has the first full-page drag and drop visual designer for Ruby On Rails. It has an ultra-fast debugger with professional quality features such as conditional breakpoints, tracepoints and drill-down watch variables. It is the first IDE to support drag and drop design for Microsoft’s IronRuby and it even has an integrated debugger for Sun’s JRuby.

Here we provide a brief overview of just a few of the major features of Ruby In Steel...

Debugging

Ruby In Steel’s ultra-fast ‘Cylon’ debugger provides...

 Speed

The ultra-fast ‘Cylon’ debugger

Ruby and Rails debugging is notoriously slow. Not any longer. Ruby In Steel’s Cylon debugger blazes through your code.

 Breakpoints and Tracing

Step through your code

Step into/step-out/step-over code in Ruby and Rails applications.

 Hover and Drill-down

Drill-down debugging

Drill-down debugging lets you look inside objects and expand arrays and hashes in the docked debugging windows, in the code editor or even right inside the interactive Ruby console!

Docked debug windows

 Dynamic Debugging

Change variable values while debugging

Evaluate code and change the values of variables while debugging.

 Conditional Breakpoints

Add conditions in Ruby code

Break when a condition (a test of one or more values) is met.

Other debugging features:
 Tracepoints
 JRuby Debugger
 Break on exception
 Break on hitcount
 Run macro on break

The debugger is supported by a range of tools and windows including:
 Watch
 Locals
 Autos
 Quick Watch
 Breakpoints
 Call Stack.

Editing

Ruby In Steel provides extensive syntax-aware editing for Ruby and Rails.

 Code Coloring and Code Folding

Code coloring and folding

The code editors provide customizable coloring - even for Ruby code embedded into Rails (R)HTML. Code folding operates on classes, modules, methods, if blocks and many other constructs - including user-defined collapsible regions...

 Bracket and Keyword/end Matching

Keyword..end matching

Opening and closing brackets are highlighted. A keyboard shortcut lets you move you cursor between brackets or Ruby keyword/end pairs such as class...end and def..end.

Ruby In Steel also has...

Snippets with ‘edit points’

 Snippets that auto-generate code blocks

Ruby and ERb Snippet editor

 A Snippet editor to let you create your own snippets without coding
 Smart or Block indenting to auto-align align your code
 Automatic code formatting (a selected block or an entire document)
Plus all the editing features you would expect such as multi-level undo/redo, bookmarks, split-window editing and user definable macros.

IntelliSense

Ruby In Steel offers unparalleled analytical code completion and navigation tools for Ruby.

 Fast Code Completion Analyzes Code As It Is Written

Drop-down lists provide relevant and accurate information on the methods that are available to objects and classes (both those in the Ruby and Rails libraries and those that you write yourself).

‘Local scope’ (Common) code completion

Dual-page completion lists let you show class-specific detail, for clarity (see above) or the members of the class and all its ancestors, for completeness (see below).

Broader scope (All) code completion

Code completion is automatically triggered by a dot after an identifier and by the double-colon :: scope resolution operator. Completion lists may also be triggered by CTRL-Space. The IntelliSense engine analyzes code as it is written and updates completion lists as appropriate. You may optionally tailor completion lists by specifically omitting elements such as ancestor class methods, global variables and keywords. Notice that embedded (RDOC) documentation for members is shown in a tooltip. You can also hover over classes and methods in the editor to view RDOC.

 Tooltips and Parameter Completion

Parameter hints

Enter an opening bracket after a method name to see a highlighted hint showing parameters and their types.

Extra parameter information can be added via ‘type assertions’

In cases where classes cannot be inferred, add ‘type assertion’ comments for extra IntelliSense.

Tooltip hint for a variable

Hover over any object to see its fully-qualified (including ‘nested modules’) class name.

 Speed Unlike some other Ruby editors, the Ruby In Steel code completion is fast!

The Visual Rails Workbench

Ruby In Steel provides a unique visual design environment for Ruby On Rails.

 Visual Designer

The visual designer lets you drag and drop controls from the Toolbox and move and resize them with the mouse.

You can adjust styles in a stylesheet or set properties for Ruby On Rails web pages in the Properties panel.

 Code Editor

In code view the Document Outline displays a tree of the component parts and the editor highlights them in different coloured ‘overlays’ (indicating Layout, View, Partial).

Other features of the Visual Rails Workbench:

 Split view code/form editing
 Toggle ERb/RHTML editing between HTML editor and Rails (Ruby-aware) editor
 Round-tripping between ‘web format’ HTML and ‘Rails format’ ERb/RHTML
 Edit code as ERb/RHTML or as HTML
 Document Navigator navigates document structure (HTML/CSS)/or methods (ERB/Ruby)
 Quick navigation between controller and view
 Import/Export to other web page design tools such as Dreamweaver/Expression Web
 Save/restore named ‘versions’ of page designs to/from an archive of work in progress
 Auto-backup of changes to templates
 Support for Rails 1 and Rails 2

Ruby On Rails Tools

In addition to the Visual Rails Workbench, Ruby In Steel has deep support for Ruby On Rails Development

The Rake and Generate tools

It has project start-up wizards and (optionally) docked, tabbed and floating tool windows and dialogs such as:
 Generators
 Rake Tasks
 Gem Run

RHTML Editing

RHTML editing with snippets

 Code collapsing, code coloring, snippets, toggle between RHTML and HTML editing.

 Analytical IntelliSense for Rails

Context-sensitive Rails code completion

Code completion is context sensitive for models, controllers, tests and views.

Code completion for embedded Ruby

Code completion even works on embedded Ruby in RHTML files.

 One-click Debugging

Debug Ruby even embedded in RHTML templates

Debug Rails applications fast - even into embedded Ruby (in RHTML templates) - using the ‘Cylon’ One-Click Debugger.

 There are many other Rails tools such as a quick toggle between the HTML and ERb (RHTML) editors to provide best support for either web page or embedded Ruby editing’; quick-jump navigation between a Controller action method and the matching view template;

Tools and Wizards

Docked or floating consoles

 Fully integrated Ruby, Rails, Script and IRB consoles

Context-sensitive online documentation

 RDOC window shows formatted documentation when you hover over an object identifier in the editor

The Ruby Explorer

 The Ruby Explorer lets you navigate the class library - even into documentation extracted from C-source files

Context-sensitive Navigation Bars

 Drop-down Navigation Bars over the editor for fast code navigation

The Ruby Connector

Connect .NET to Ruby with the Ruby Connector

To design visual front ends for your Ruby programs, call the Ruby interpreter from your .NET applications or create ‘hybrid’ applications combining Ruby and a .NET language use our drag-and-drop component, the ‘Ruby Connector’.

Manage projects in the Solution Explorer

Ruby In Steel projects are managed from the Visual Studio Solution Explorer. You can simply create, import or convert Ruby and Rails projects as well as add, move and delete files and folders. Ruby In Steel is fully configurable (colors, tab and formatting options etc.) and comes with a comprehensive PDF manual plus context-sensitive online help.

For more details, refer to The Feature List. For a complete description of Ruby In Steel’s features, see The Manual.

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Minimum Requirements: Windows XP (service pack 2) or Vista. Visual Studio 2005 or 2008 Standard Edition or above; alternatively, use the Ruby In Steel ’All-in-one installer’ to install a free Ruby-language copy of Visual Studio 2008.