CodeGear to ship Rails IDE

As Web developers flock to the Ruby on Rails framework for its speed and ease of use, CodeGear has jumped into the Rails bandwagon, and is expected to ship a tool soon.

CodeGear, a leader in developer tools, hasannounced an integrated development environment (IDE) for Ruby on Rails that is now available for beta testing and is currently planned to ship in the second half of 2007.  This was earlier reporter

Unveiled at the RailsConf 2007 in Portland, Oregon, the new technology offers innovative productivity features designed to allow both new and experienced Rails developers to build Ruby on Rails applications efficiently and quickly.   

David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, said, “It’s encouraging to see the Rails ecosystem extend itself to include commercial tool vendors. I heartily welcome CodeGear to the arena and I’m excited to see what they come up with. It’s a wonderful time for users and vendors alike in the world of Rails.”

Said Michael Swindell, CodeGear vice president of products and strategy, "Ruby on Rails has become a serious Web application platform because Ruby on Rails makes it extremely fast and easy to develop rich, data-driven Web 2.0 applications with minimal coding.  However, the ‘magic’ behind the productivity also introduces new challenges for developers building, growing and maintaining ‘real world’ production-level Web applications.”  

“Our new Ruby on Rails technology addresses these challenges by going beyond just editing and debugging Ruby scripts.  It provides a comprehensive Rails-centric development environment which both initiates beginners and streamlines experts. Also, based on new CodeGear IDE innovations, it is the first tool we’ve developed that will likely appeal equally to command line, IDE, and visual developers,” said Swindell.

Key features of the Ruby on Rails technology include:

    * A complete IDE with full support for Ruby and Rails, enabling advanced development features such as Code Completion, Refactoring, type browsing and navigation
    * Innovative new “Commanders” that uniquely merge the power of the command line with the ease of use and productivity of the IDE, Wizards and Code Insights
    * Dependency visualization and navigation to seamlessly work with all resources regardless of their relationship, location or format
    * A full set of development and deployment modules including Ruby, Rails, Gems and Database