From: NISHIO Mizuho <gha@...>
Date: 2001-12-09T14:32:53+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27997] Re: Ruby IDE?? What about using Eclipse??

I use Ruby Class Browser, which is written by 
Hiroshi Igarashi( previous Ruby/GTK maintainer).
It works well for me. It can

* show the hierarchy of the class/module
* show the method/constant name
* handle extension libraries

It uses Ruby/GTK, and is included in ruby-gtk-0.26.tar.gz. 
You install Ruby/GTK, and run ruby-gtk-0.26/sample/rbbr.rb.

******************************
NISHIO Mizuho 

> I think the file approach would be best.  Robert Feldt is going to be releasing the Rulator (RubyInRuby) lexer/parser (based on Rockit) we can use it to build Abstract Syntax Trees from source files for doing exactly this.  Also, he is adding the ability to hold the comments contained within the source in the AST as well (instead of throwing them out).  So we can use the comments in the class browser :)  
> 
> One issue I have is the classes defined in extensions (.so files) would not be browsable with this approach.  The only way I can see doing this is loading extensions and walking the ObjectSpace (which is another approach to the class browser).  Maybe what would be cool is to have a class browser that first listed all the source files/extensions, then let you "walk into" them and extend your ObjectSpace (and defined classes, modules, etc).  A kind of dual-pane approach.
> 
> Thoughts?
> 
> -Rich