Tooling on Mac OS for Ruby Development

I mentioned in my previous post I was starting a new project, and interestingly enough, my newish 2015 iMac doesn't have much in the way of tooling for Ruby Development installed.

I quickly fixed this by installing

• iTerm2 - a console replacement
• Sublime Text 3 - a coder's text editor

If I come across any other generic tool I end up using I might add it to this list.

Some basic descriptions are after the break.

iTerm2

iTerm2 is an alternative to the standard Console program that comes with Mac OSX. It offers many features over Console, like Tabs, hotkeys, improved customisation, better clipboard support and more focus on the needs of the power user.

iTerm2 is GPLv2 and you have the option to donate on the website.

Sublime Text 3

Sublime Text 3 is a coder's text editor, not an IDE. I started using it back when it was Sublime Text 2, and I had no problem justifying the sub-$100 license.

Alongside the major productivity features - tabs, completely mouse-less navigation, the innovative 'mini-map', the Goto-Anywhere feature and lots more - the robust 3rd party add-on eco-system means  Sublime can be extended to support any major language, testing frameworks, linters, markup languages, source control systems, and anything else someone can dream up.

ST3 is therefore a good editor for Ruby, Python, the web... and who knows what else. 

ST3 is a cross-platform editor, and while I use it all day at work on the Windows platform, ST3 benefits from the more mature unix-compatible tooling available for Ruby. Being behind a ruthless corporate proxy also commonly gets in the way. So I'm quite excited to see how I can set it up on a Mac at home.

Installing the Package Control add-on is a must - outside the corporate proxy installation is super-simple. Once installed, further discovery and installation of anything else is trivial.The Package Control website is also a good destination just to find out what is going on in the world of ST3 packages.

I also found a possibly useful set of tips for setting ST3 up for Ruby which I will try. There are many of these around, and the exact mix for you will depend on your platform, ruby frameworks, build systems and arbitrary preferences. ST3, if you want it to, can replace your entire shell console, but I haven't taken that leap yet.