Hack to Learn

Traditionally I use jEdit for writing code. However, the CVS and SVN management in Eclipse cannot be beat.

Since I have all but forsaken other programming languages in favor of Ruby on Rails, Eclipse is more useful to me with the RadRails extension.

I run Gentoo on my workstation, and after searching the web could not find any concise documentation on the best practice for installing RadRails on Gentoo. So, as more often than not I decided to do it myself, and document it here.

I want Eclipse 3.2.x and the Gentoo Java Team strongly suggests everyone upgrade to that version as well.

• Problem #1: Eclipse 3.2.x is, as of this writing, masked in Gentoo’s Portage
• Solution #1: Append the following string to the end of your /etc/portage/package.keywords file:

  dev-util/eclipse-sdk

• Problem #2: Installing Eclipse
• Solution #2: Emerge as root:

  # emerge eclipse-sdk

This may take some time. Portage had 30 dependent ebuilds to emerge before it even got to eclipse-sdk. You may want to grab a Yerba Mate and read your favorite RSS feeds.

After Gentoo is finished emerging everything, beside being an hour or so older, you should be able to launch eclipse.

$ eclipse-3.2

Install RadRails:

• On the Eclipse menu drill into Help->Software Updates->Find and Install...
• Select Search for new features to install
• Click Next

Define RDT Remote Site:

• Click New Remote Site
• Name: RDT
• URL: http://updatesite.rubypeople.org/release
• Click OK

Define RadRails Remote Site:

• Click New Remote Site
• Name: RadRails
• URL: http://radrails.sourceforge.net/update
• Click OK

Define Subclipse Remote Site:

• Click New Remote Site
• Name: Subclipse
• URL: http://subclipse.tigris.org/update_1.0.x
• Click OK

Make sure all three new remote sites are checked then click Finish and follow the prompts. Eventually Eclipse will prompt for a reboot. Do it, then when it comes back up you have a shiny new install of RadRails.

Happy Coding!

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References:

• Eclipse – Gentoo Linux Wiki
• RadRails

David Heinemeier Hansson posted that Amazon has launched a new Ruby on Rails site unspun.amazon.com. The AWS team introduces the site with this:

UnSpun helps you to find and create ranked lists by gathering votes from workers on Amazon Mechanical Turk and from the UnSpun community. We show the popular opinion, with no “spin” (hence the name)—along with links to websites with more information about the particular items on the list. If you don’t see the list you are looking for, simply create it and rankings will start populating within a few minutes. 2,294 ranked lists are already on UnSpun, holding 640,107 items, with more coming in all the time.

It is an interesting idea and seems to work pretty well on Rails, though I have to question the type of community that would put Ruby on the list of “Worst Programming Language”. And at the time of this writing “Basic” is number one? … Dubious.