Check this out:

http://developer.apple.com/tools/developonrailsleopard.html

3rd Rail: This was by far the most promising when Borland created it but what’s killed it is the stuff that is wrapped around the Java to ensure licenses are paid. This breaks the Java and on my Ubuntu 64 bit system means that for me both JBuilder (which I loved using) and 3rd Rail were killed off completely. Which is a huge pity because these two IDEs are absolutely awesome. 3rd Rail in particular could have been the only player in town IMHO.

Netbeans. Well, what can I say? I tried and tried to get 6.5.1 to work properly but, the bottom line, is that Netbeans is a Java development environment with Ruby rammed onto it. It doesn’t do just about everything that you would expect an IDE to do. Effectively you have a not-great text editor with context sensitive code completion that is basic at best, nowhere near, for example, the stellar implementation in JBuilder or 3rd Rail.

Then there are all the problems with trying to run JRuby in it. In short, forget it. Doesn’t work. Creating a project simply doesn’t work. The gems system is broken. In fact, it all is. I have spent weeks upon weeks hunting down obscure errors, misleading output and minimal help online trying to get the most basic of Rails projects created. I succeeded in getting one project shoe horned into existence but only through effectively bypassing everything and anything from the IDE side, hand cranking the creation at the command line and fixing things in vi.

Netbeans does have Rails support, yes. But in version 6.5.1 it is pre-alpha at best with none of the features that you use and IDE to obtain. It’s less than useless and I honestly regret taking all the time to try and get it to run.

Plain Ruby (non-Rails) worked better for me in Netbeans, but then I ran into the fact that debugging in Netbeans simply doesn’t exist. There is a half-hearted attempt at it, but it does nothing useful other than allow you to step through your code. Variable inspection, watch points, etc may as well not exist and so many debugging features just simply don’t work, aren’t available or simply are not implemented.

The best solution for Linux-based Rails programming that I have so far is the good old fashioned vi text editor and google on hand.

So you should go for a Vim equivalent and a command prompt. On MacOS, that means TextMate and Terminal and if you’re not on MacOS then, well, good luck.

I love TextMate and definitely recommend it. Between in and the Mac terminal, I tend to get things done quickly. The only negative for me is the lack of code completion, but none of the IDEs that I tried had useful code completion, so nothing lost.