Introduction

I have been using NetBeans 6.1 IDE for some time forcing myself to use JRuby because of the issues that NetBeans has with Ruby. I must say my experience thus far has been superior to any NetBeans release to date. That being said I am planning on using this post to list potential to make the core NetBeans 6.X/7.X the best release for Ruby on Rails developers.

Enhancement Requests

I want to preface this section of the post with the fact that I feel NetBeans is a wonderful IDE and has many features that many Java developers benefit from. That being said this is by no means discrediting any of the wonderful advancements they have brought to the Rails IDE arena.

Permissions

Using NetBeans 6.1 without JRuby is just a hassle. The implementation either needs to be dropped or made more seamless.

Gem Management

There needs to be a better quicker way to manage gems. Currently it is a long painful process which is different from what Rails developers are used to. I am a die-hard Mac OS X Rails developer and I am used to opening up the terminal and managing my gems there. I thing the best solution for this is to have a jruby/gem console that opens the terminal with the correct PATH specified and all the gem management can be done right there.

Rake Tasks

Rails developers prefer using their keyboards with shortcuts. We are used to quick editors that have great keyboard support. The editor that comes to mind is TextMate. That being said I feel there must be a better way to run rake tasks and other commands that are run frequently through the command line.

Source Code Management

GIT is the new hotness in the rails world and there needs to be solid support for git in NetBeans. There is not much of a message here except for that git support is a must.

Capistrano Integration

This would make NetBeans a HUGE success. Integration with Capistrano for developers to deploy their application. There could be some sort of collaboration on deployment where you can test each app that is marked for deployment on a local glassfish server and then one of the choices get deployed out to production.

Conclusion

Any of the above enhancement requests are welcome to collaboration and improvement via commands or email. I look forward to your comments.