Rails IDE - Komodo 4.1

Posted by blackrat on May 23, 2007

I’m a great believer in free software, most of my systems are run using Apache, MySQL, Linux, and Ruby, as I’m sure quite a lot of you are running also. I’m also a great believer in the right tool for the right job, even if that isn’t a free tool. After using several of the free offerings, I downloaded the 4.0 beta of Komodo IDE to see if it was the right tool for developing RubyOnRails apps.

It was a little clunky. The editor and syntax highlighting were fine, and the approach to extending language support was also great. (I use Haml and Sass, rather than RHtml and CSS) The debugger took up to a minute to hit breakpoints, however, and although it was possible to use it , it was a little more difficult than I would have liked.

4.1 has changed all of that for me. Currently in beta, it is fast and shows the great strides that they have achieved. The Pro version is simply the best IDE I have used for Rails, bar none. I purchased mine and use Komodo now almost exclusively on all of my projects. Version 4.1 is available as a Trial from here.

Update: 4.1 has become the official release version, and is no longer in Beta. I feel an upgrade coming on.

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  1. paulbutcher Sun, 10 Jun 2007 10:25:49 BST

    Thanks for the pointer, Paul. I’ve been using RadRails and (recently) Aptana for a while, but have never really been happy with it. Aptana shows a lot of promise, but it’s got a long way to go (and has taken a few backward steps from RadRails).

    I’ve also tried TextMate - which everyone seems to rave about. But it just doesn’t do it for me. What kind of programmer’s editor can’t do a multiple file search in the background?

    I’ll give Komodo a go - cheers!

  2. blackrat Fri, 03 Aug 2007 10:40:35 BST

    Hi Paul.

    I also went through TextMate and couldn’t see quite why people were raving about it. Komodo should handle your multiple file search just fine. It’s not perfect, but certainly better than any other I’ve used, and cross platform, which is a big plus since I switch between the Mac laptop and Linux desktop several times a day.
    My main gripe at the moment is that its multi-screen support could be better (tooltips on the launch screen as opposed to the screen I moved it to). Now out in 4.2beta and enhanced again. (Beta crashes sometimes though, so be wary of using it in anger.) I’d be interested to hear how you get on with it.

  3. mferrier Fri, 21 Mar 2008 15:31:48 GMT

    Hi Paul,

    Did you get Haml syntax highlighting working in Komodo IDE 4.1? I downloaded the Haml xpi 0.1 file and installed it, but don’t seem to be getting any highlighting, Even though the IDE shows the file type as “Haml” in the bottom right hand corner.

    Any tips?

  4. blackrat Wed, 26 Mar 2008 18:42:10 GMT

    Same problem for me in 4.3, so I’m afraid I can’t help at the moment. I’ve just added a comment to Eric Promislow’s announcement, and I’ll fire him off an email to see what the state is, but I know he’s busy at the moment so I’m not expecting an early reply.