Rails IDEs - 3rdRails From CodeGear
September 23, 2007
I tried using Aptana and JEdit as IDEs for Rails development (to some success but not fully happy) before and recently tested CodeGear’s 3rdRail. I could see that 3rdRails is also designed based on Eclipse platform (same as case for Aptana Radrails). But what makes 3rdRail different from Aptana (other than $299 price tag) is couple of cool features like Logical representation of folders/files in project explorer. Controllers, Views are nicely tucked together. Models and Helpers are visible at top level makes it easy for you instead of grilling down the folders to get them.
Another neat feature is Console (they call it Project Commander), not only it shows output you could directly type and run all rails commands here (like rake tasks or installing plugins etc.)
Finally there is “Refactoring support”. For example, if you choose to rename an action, it will figure out all the files that action is referred and changes for you.
Go check it out at http://www.codegear.com/products/3rdrail. At least try for 3o days and see if you like it.
