I have been debugging with full breakpoint and global/local variable inspection/modification in Arachno Ruby IDE with success by just starting WebBrick inside the IDE. I find it to be extremely straight forward and easy to setup:
- Create a Rails project as normal (via command line).
- Download and install Archno Ruby IDE.
- Create a new project in Arachno Ruby. The base directory is the directory of the rails application you created above. Be sure to check ‘Use existing directory.’
- When asked to pick a project file, choose ‘dispatch.rb’.
- Navigate to Run → Create Target
- Select script/server as the source file
- Click Okay
- Navigate to Run → Debug
This should startup WebBrick with debugging. Open up a controller and put a breakpoint somewhere (click in the margin). Using a browser, navigate to the controller with the breakpoint as usual (ie. localhost:3000/mycontroller).
Upon executing your controller with the breakpoint, Arachno Ruby should automatically show debug information in the Debuggee State window. If not, open up the Debuggee State window and select the thread in red from the drop down. If there is no thread in red then the breakpoint was not hit. Make sure it is on a line that will be executed and try again…
Comment from Vendor:
You can also use the “Fast Debugger Mode” when developing rails, in this mode the debugger is 50% faster but it will only show the top stackframe after a breakpoint is hit. But speed shouldn’t be any problem if you have a modern > 2 GHz system.
Comment from Kai:
With Arachno 0.7.4 you should rename or copy script/server to script/server.rb. I found this hint in the japanese wiki.