A couple reasons why an Eclipse user might like Ruby

Reason #1: Ruby Gems



If you've worked with Eclipse you understand the power of Eclipse's plugin manager. With just a few clicks you can install a whole new component that becomes tightly integrated with the environment. Gems are Ruby's equivalent to Eclipse plugins. With just a network connection and a simple command you can extend your Ruby environment with any of the latest Ruby do-dads.

Let's say you've gone to Rubyforge and downloaded the One-Click-Installer and installed Ruby. If you then decide you want to install Rails the hip Ruby web application framework, you just need to enter this line at a command prompt.


gem install rails --include-dependencies


It's really that simple to download and install new components. If you want to find what components are already installed you just enter a command like:


gem list


If you want to find what components are available the command is:


gem list --remote



Reason #2: Ruby Eclipse Plugin



The Ruby plugin for Eclipse has been around for a while but it wasn't until recently that it's come into it's own with the release of version 0.6.0. It's not equivalent to the Java environment by any means, but it's very usable. It's the first IDE for Ruby that's lured me away from PE for doing Ruby development.

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