Ruby Dropped in Netbeans 7,How to Use it in Netbeans7?

Question

In Netbeans 7, Ruby support was dropped:

Although our Ruby support has historically been well received, based on existing low usage trends we are unable to justify the continued allocation of resources to support the feature.

How can I use it in Netbeans 7?

Answer 1

Oracle stopped supporting the NetBeans Ruby plugin, but the development has been taken over by the community. In fact, there are now more people working on the plugin than back when Oracle did still support it, including three of the lead developers of JRuby, one of the original developers of the NetBeans Ruby plugin and one former NetBeans core developer, all of whom would probably not be working on it if it was still controlled by Oracle.

They are still using the NetBeans source control repository, the NetBeans project infrastructure, the NetBeans build server, the NetBeans plugin server, … in order to keep the transition as seamless as possible.

Pretty much the only difference is that you can no longer select the plugin directly in the installer, you have to install NetBeans first and then install it via the plugin menu, just like every other plugin, like the Scala or Clojure plugins, for example.

Just download and install the All-In-One Edition, deactivate all options except Base IDE during installation and install the Ruby plugin afterwards.

The plugin center for Ruby from the Continuous Integration server is http://Deadlock.NetBeans.Org/hudson/job/ruby/lastSuccessfulBuild/artifact/build/updates/updates.xml

Answer 2

I followed the steps described in this blog post - http://blog.enebo.com/2011/02/installing-ruby-support-in-netbeans-70.html and it works. Enjoy

Click Tools -> Plugins Click on
'Settings' tab Click on 'Add' button
to get Update Center Customizer popup
Set name to 'Beta 1' Set URL: to 'http://updates.netbeans.org/netbeans/updates/7.0/uc/beta/stable/catalog.xml.gz'
Press 'OK' Click to 'Available
Plugins' Click 'Reload Catalog' Choose
'Ruby and Rails' Pat yourself on the back

Edit: now ruby on rails plugin can be found directly at "Tools">"Plugins">"Available Plugins">"Ruby And Rails" (if you don't find this plugin at the provided path you should download and install the latest netbeans ide)

Reedit: if you need Ruby On Rails support for Netbeans 7.1 check http://blog.enebo.com/2012/01/workaround-for-ruby-support-on-netbeans.html

Answer 3

NetBeans 7.3:

You can install the Ruby and Rails plugin for NetBeans 7.3.x directly from the plugin portal:

http://plugins.netbeans.org/plugin/38549

Here are some installation instructions:

https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/ruby_on_rails_in_netbeans

NetBeans 7.2:

To install the Ruby on Rails plugin for NetBeans 7.2 add this update center in Tools -> Plugins -> Settings:

https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/resource/nb-72-community-ruby.xml

Obtained from Geertjan's Blog:

https://blogs.oracle.com/geertjan/entry/ruby_in_netbeans_ide_7

Building the plugin from sources: I used and built the sources linked from Geertjan's Blog:

http://hg.netbeans.org/community-ruby

When building the plugin NetBeans (it took a very long time), I got the following error:

Could not load definitions from resource net/sf/antcontrib/antlib.xml. It could not be found

This can be fixed by installing ant-contrib on your system, e.g.:

yum -y install ant-contrib

Find the JAR file (in my case it was located at /usr/share/java/ant/ant-contrib.jar) and add it to Ant's classpath in NetBeans through Tools -> Options -> Java -> Ant -> Add JAR/ZIP.

After that it should build. If you want to use the plugins, right-click the NB Ruby project and click on Package As -> NBMs. This will create an Update Center. You can add this update update center to your NetBeans via Tools -> Plugins -> Settings -> Add where the URL should be:

file:/PathToTheRepository/build/updates/updates.xml

After that you can install the Ruby and Rails plugin.

Happy coding!

Answer 4

I realize this answer does not provide a technical solution to the question, but it is an answer of sorts. If you would like to see Oracle include official Ruby support in Netbeans again, please consider signing the following petition:

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/re-include-ruby-support-in-netbeans/

Answer 5

For Netbeans 7.3 you can install the recently released Ruby and Rails plugin by Tom Enebo.

You can follow these installation steps by nichot20:

1. Download the package (containing .jar, .nbm files and updates.xml)
2. Go to the plugins->settings tab
3. Add a new "Update Center" with a url of the form: file:///path/to/updates.xml
4. Do a refresh and then it all appears it the list of plug ins.

Answer 6

Ruby on Rails support is now included in the default modules list. I have not been able to find a download with just the netbeans ide (no additional plugins) so I download the php bundle and then uninstall all the php plugins and install the Ruby on Rails plugin.

I would suggest also installing the git and scss plugins. The scss plugin is not yet in the default plugin list for 7.0, but you can get an nbm for it here. I install the 0.1 version, not the 0.3 beta version.

The full list of plugins I REMOVE are: Bugzilla, CVS, Hudson, Mercurial, PHP, PHP Documentor Tag Help, PHP Symfony Framework, PHP Zend Framework, Software as a Service, Subversion. Of course if you use any of these, you may not want to remove them.