RadRails is a Rapid Application Development IDE for the Ruby on Rails framework. The goal of this project is to give Rails developers with everything they need to develop, manage, test and deploy their applications. Features include source control, code assist, refactoring, debugging, WEBrick servers, generator wizards, syntax highlighting, data tools, and much more.

The RadRails IDE is built on the Eclipse RCP, and includes the RDT and Subclipse plug-in. The RadRails tools are also available as Eclipse plug-ins.

At EclipseCon 2006 Radrails won the Community Award for Best Open-Source Eclipse-based tool.

Features

Web Features

Free and open source; cross-platform, stand-alone IDE or Eclipse plug-in

File- and project-based workflow with integrated FTP/SFTP

Real-time, Wiki-based online help; IDE translated into multiple languages

Scriptable using JavaScript (“Aptana Monkey”)

Backed by full-time developers; nearing a million combined downloads

Deep support (including cross-browser tips) for JavaScript, HTML, CSS

Syntax highlighting, auto completion, code assist, error reporting, etc.

Full support for JavaScript and CSS embedded within HTML; unified outlining

Works with any JavaScript, incl. all Ajax libraries

JavaScript debugger with live Firebug integration

Rails Features

Unified, deep support for Ruby, Rails, RHTML, JS, HTML and CSS.

Syntax highlighting, auto completion, code assist, error reporting, outlining, etc.

Ruby code generation: constructors, overrides, templates, accessors

Refactoring: local to instance variables, extract methods, inlining, renaming…

Fast, integrated debugger

Support for Rails generators, Rake, plugins, and server management

View unit tests and test results

Integrated code analysis

Embedded database navigator and query console

Snippets and wizards

Integrated help, including “Go to definition”, RDoc/RI, and code explorer

History

RadRails was started by Kyle Shank, Marc Baumbach, and Matt Kent in September 2005. During that time, the three developers worked as co-ops at IBM Rational in Raleigh, NC. Development continued through 2006, including some contributions from Andy Gianfagna. Ryan Lowe joined the team in mid-2006 to deploy and maintain an automated build system for the project. In November 2006, Kyle Shank and Matt Kent began working on an idea for a startup company, which would eventually become Persai. By March 2007, Kyle and Matt were devoting most of their spare time to Persai and had little time left to maintain RadRails. Kyle met with Aptana founder Paul Colton at EclipseCon 2007, and it became clear that handing over the project would be in the best interests of the RadRails community. On March 8, 2007 Aptana took over the project and renamed it to Aptana RadRails. Although RadRails is still an open source project, most work is now done by an Aptana employee: Christopher Williams, the lead developer of the RDT project that RadRails was built upon.