What am I supposed to do?
Many developers are used to the convenience of an IDE, preferrably with the ability to set breakpoints, step through code and examine variables.
Antares
For the Windows platform. Download Antares, which is free for personal and educational use. Commercial use and additional features are available at modest cost.
Arachno Ruby — How To Use Arachno Ruby IDE with Rails
One option to fill this need is Arachno Ruby, which can be easily configured to debug Rails apps (). The environment is free for a 30-day trial period and thereafter can be purchased for a modest sum.
Eclipse — HowToUseEclipseForRailsDevelopment
Here is a nice Eclipse plug-in for Ruby. Ruby Development Tools and you should also check out the Setting up a Rails Development Environment on Windows Using Eclipse HOWTO
The above-mentiond Ruby Development Tools for Eclipse can be installed and configured to allow Eclipse to function as an editor and launcher, but interactive debugging in Eclipse is not yet available. See descriptions of how to do this by D’Andrew Thompson and Brian Hogan .
NetBeans IDE
HowToUseNetBeansForRailsDevelopment
Sun Microsystems, Inc. offers both the NetBeans Ruby-Only IDE as well as a multi-language IDE with Ruby support. Both provide an integrated development environment for building, running, testing, and debugging Ruby and Ruby on Rails applications. You can download the IDE from the NetBeans website.
Radrails
If you’d like a full IDE for rails, try Aptana (formerly "RadRails")
RadRails which is based on Eclipse, is rapidly blossoming into a full featured, rails specific IDE. It supports Wizards for creating new Rails projects, controllers, models. Also ruby and rails syntax highlighting and content assist. Integrated webrick server management, and even data view and a database connection editor.
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RIDE-ME
Riding Rails on Windows!
RIDE-ME (or Rails IDE – Minus Eclipse) is an open source, Windows based development environment, designed specifically for Streamlined Ruby on Rails development.
RIDE-ME is geared primarily toward developers who are migrating from a Microsoft development platform. The familiar Visual Studio feel should make ASP .NET to Rails converts right at home.
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Activestate’s Komodo IDE is supposedly going to have full built-in WEBrick debugging in the next 3.x version.