The NetBeans Ruby support plug-ins provide an integrated development environment for building, running, testing, and debugging Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications. A good resource for NetBeans Ruby support is http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/Ruby.
- Get Ruby support for NetBeans. You can download either a Ruby only version of the NetBeans IDE or a full version with Ruby support included. Or you can add Ruby support to an existing NetBeans version (6.0 or later). You can either use the bundled JRuby interpreter or you can set up the IDE to your your own native or JRuby installation. Detailed instructions for installing and configuring Ruby support are here: http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/ruby/setting-up.html.
- Open an existing Rails project or use the new project wizard to create your Rails project. The wizard asks you to specify your database server and whether you want to use JDBC (for JRuby). When it creates the project files, it edits your database.yml and environment.rb file for you based on your input. You have to add your password to the database.yml file and change the default db name, if necessary.
- Use the right-click menu from the Projects window to create files and open the Rails Generator wizard. See http://www.netbeans.org/kb/60/ruby/getting-started.html#railsproject for a quick getting-started tutorial.
- The editor provides background error parsing syntax highlighting, code templates, code completion, parameter hints, smart indentation, formatting, pair matching, quickfixes and hints, along with many other features. You can also use the IDE’s debugger and unit testing features. Details about these features are here: http://wiki.netbeans.org/wiki/view/Ruby.