Garbage Burrito

Awesome -- thanks for the concise summary!

Yeah Geoff, I've successfully installed mongrel, capistrano, railsmachine, rmagick, and ruby crypt. Once you get through all the steps, everything should run smoothly.

This is a coincidence but I have exactly the same setup for my rails.... cool I know it works like a charm. I started using console because I could use tabs in it and instead of having two different SSH consoles open I started using Console...good stuff

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana
Or in this case, those who cannot learn emacs are condemned to reinvent it. emacs works well on Windows, by the way.

This is fantastic. I've been really enjoying E for the last couple of weeks, but I hadn't yet integrated into my Rails dev environment. Thanks for this timely post!

How do you get console 2 to install on Vista? I keep getting dll errors.

I do the same sorts of things at work for Rails development, but at home use a Mac. It's funny, but if there were ever a reason to switch to a Mac it would be having to go out of your way like this just to make Windows more Mac-like. Take it from someone who uses both, you'll be glad you switched. :-)

When you say:

> You'll want to setup cygwin as a Console Tab.
> Just go into the settings and click "Add" under "Tabs".
> Use the following as the "Shell".

...what does this mean? Go into the settings of which program and click "Add" under "Tabs"? I'm not seeing this option in E, in Console or in Cygwin.

I have a problem with irb on windows consoles (including cygwin and console2). The symptom is that when I write long lines (not *very* long, just long), executes it, and then use arrow up to repeat the line and starts to go back on the line it (the line) usually gets totally screwed up. The screw up is only "graphical" in that it's totally unreadable but I can still edit (although you don't know what you edit...) and execute.

Anyone knows what this is about?

jEdit.

Free. Cross-platform.

You can make it look like textmate. It's got projects, code-completion, consoles. It's got SFTP, bash scripting, grep-like functions. Diff, super abbreviations, macros, code explorers, templates.

Even got Sudoko.

I heart jEdit.

Great write up Ben!

I've been using this setup for about 6 weeks now since discovering e and can attest to its power to improve productivity! Amazing when you can emulate the workflow of the core team, everything just falls into place better!

ADDITIONAL TIP: If you're using SQLite databases you can install SQLiteBrowser (web link) and setup windows to open .sqlite2 and .sqlite3 database using it - then when editing in e you can double click the entry in the db/ folder and it will open your database for direct editing - real time saver and knits database and code together in the same environment!
Note: you need different version of SQLite Browser for the different versions of .sqlite2 and .sqlite3

FURTHER TIP: Make sure you have the latest version of e installed and then if you have TortoiseSVN (web link) installed the project pane will show you the version control/svn status of each file! Makes the whole thing into the ultimate Rails IDE

@Matti - Yeah, I have the same problem, I also compiled Ruby from source within cygwin hoping for a speed improvement but any there was was negligible. I now tend to use a combination of the two, I put up with the speed of cygwin for generating controllers, models etc because I'm not doing that all the time and it encourages me to not speed-type and make a spelling mistake (which I've been know to do). But I use a native windows installation of Ruby and mongrel to run the development server, since waiting for cygwin's ruby to run mongrel will make you wanna kill yourself.

You should also take a look at Intype. Although its no where near as feature complete yet (its still in Alpha stages), it is going in a similar direction to e: web link

I have an easier solution that will save you a lot of time and effort.

Step 1: Buy a mac.

Step 2: ???

Step 3: Profit!

@Cris B - I've rebooted my machine and now it's about twice as fast, which is good enough for me. I'm also switching when the new macs to come out! Thanks for your help dude.

Has anyone had problems with installing the mongrel or mechanize gems with cygwin? It' won't compile for me even though I pick the rails option.

It's funny to see people saying: "You should see the new editor, InType, it's catching up fast!"

History lesson: InType started on the TextMate for Windows quest *before* e, yet e has zoomed ahead and is way more feature complete than InType, despite InType's head start.

It's fine if you want to stick with InType, but realize that both editors are quite new, yet e has managed to improve a lot more in the same period of time.

Actually Intype is not free. It is free for as long as it is in Alpha/Beta versions. The same goes for e as well. There is a relevant blog post on the e text editor site about this (e will remain free for all the beta period)

Cheers,

Nick

Oh, and then there's Ruby support in Netbeans, which I have yet to try but which is apparently superior to RadRails: web link

That's a full-blown IDE rather than a text editor though.

There is no logical reason to spend 1800+ on mac just so you can have a "cool' rails environment. Give me a break!

And also, intype is by far the worst editor I have ever used. It gives a text editor and some bundles, whoop-de-doo.

I wan an intype fan too..the first couple of versions of e that I tried weren't that great and aside from the undo history panel it didn't had much to offer.... Well I tried e again maybe a month ago and I was suprised to find a working project manager, compatiblity with textmate bundles and lots of features that made it quite a decent editor, and I gotta admit I was pretty much amazed by it... I do love the speed and simplicity of InType, and I am definitely keeping an eye on the project... but at the point where both editors are right now, e is the one I am using for all my editing needs as it features pretty much everything I need and expect from a text editor while intype is still in early alpha stages and definitly lacks important features that I expect from a text editor. I know it might change in the future , and I don't care if I eventually have to buy both... but for now I'll simply go with the one that is fulfilling most of my needs and in the meantime, that happens to be e....

And to anyone saying "Intype is free while e isn't"... please double check your info...both are offering free alpha/beta versions...that you can download and use without any limits/trial period or anything....e is free as long as it's in beta stages...and same goes for intype...but you will have to pay for both of them eventually....

I've been using e and Cygwin for some time now under Vista and I really like this editor, but Cygwin sucks. It's slow, it can't keep file permissions and it's just like an alien under Windows. Will go for a Mac.

Hey Great,

Thanks worked well for me,
I'am running Vista Bussiness

I had to chmod 0755 to /user/bin to allow writing permissions to the folder to install the rails gem

Thanks mate

Appreciate the writeup, I know many other rails folks have been tempted to drop a few grand on a macbook pro just have to have textmate. Good to see other options being detailed!

Learned of console2 and e from this blog. Thanks. Love the history feature in e. I put my vote in for these for best tools to develop for ruby on rails in windows.

I am having the same problem with console2 (build 131) as Marcus Bristav (comment 18). When I type a line in console2 (same thing happens when I just use cmd.exe) that is long (15+ characters), and then I try to backspace or navigate to the middle of the line, the cursor will appear jump up to the previous line and I can no longer tell where it's actually at in the line. It's as if cmd.exe cannot handle editing lines that are more than 15-20 characters long. Does anyone know of a fix? Thanks!