Exumerant Ctags does not work well with Ruby, you can see there are many hacks in the ruby.c code and basically it fails recognizing many cases. One of the most important is this bit:
class SomeModule::SomeClass
end
Ctags generates:
SomeModule someclass.rb /^class SomeModule::SomeClass$/;" c
which is wrong. The correct and expected entry is:
SomeClass someclass.rb /^class SomeModule::SomeClass$/;" c
This is very limiting. There are some patches for ctags available which does not work, e.g. https://github.com/xtao/overlay/blob/master/dev-util/ctags/files/ctags-5.5.4-ruby-classes.patch but looking on the ctags ruby codebase, this really needs complete rewrite.
So I have been playing with other option which is https://github.com/rdoc/rdoc-tags which works nicer, but it is slow. I mean really SLOW. Generating tags on my project is 2 seconds with ctags but one hour with this tool. Really.
I found one old project that was parsing Ruby on it's own and generating tags, but it was only for Ruby 1.8. It was slower than ctags, but not that bad.
So I am searching for some alternatives. Do you know about any other working ruby ctags generators which give you proper output and are fast?
Thanks!
Edit: I have found very nice project that works with Ruby 1.9+ and is accurate and fast. I recommend it:
https://github.com/tmm1/ripper-tags
Ripper-tags effort does solve everything described here. It is based on official Ruby parser which is also quite fast. https://github.com/tmm1/ripper-tags
gem install ripper-tags
cd your_project/
ripper-tags -R
It does also support Emacs as well.
Exuberant ctags out of the box doesn’t do a number of useful things:
It doesn’t deal with:
module A::B
It doesn’t tag (at least some of) the “operator” methods like ‘==’
It doesn’t support qualified tags, —type=+
It doesn’t output tags for constants or attributes.
Patch available, but it is only for version 5.5 and does not work anymore.
Other projects:
https://github.com/tmm1/ripper-tags (best option for Ruby 1.9+)
https://rubygems.org/gems/rdoc-tags (very slow but works with 1.8)
Source
Add following to your ~/.ctags
--regex-ruby=/(^|;)[ \t]*(class|module)[ \t]+([A-Z][[:alnum:]_]+(::[A-Z][[:alnum:]_]+)+)/\3/c,class,constant/
So you can:
deal with: module A::B
See more here: https://github.com/bltavares/dot-files/blob/master/ctags
A patch is available as of 2013-02
https://github.com/fishman/ctags (ctags patch for Ruby, including rspec)
the rspec tag generator will not properly recognize describe blocks that start with semicolor (:some-method), but other than that, it's great.
There is also https://github.com/eapache/starscope
It doesn't support the extended tag format (yet) but it does other things such as exporting cscope databases.
Related
I was looking at this blog entry: 3 Ways to Monkey-Patch Without Making a Mess and I noticed something strange:
# Actually monkey-patch DateTime
DateTime.include CoreExtensions::DateTime::BusinessDays
I've never seen this type of include before and I can't seem to find any documentation on it. How is it supposed to work and am I still supposed to still use a require call to bring in the file? I don't see how it could know the definite path and filename otherwise.
include is a standard module method in Ruby.
You will have to require the relevant file (containing the module definition) unless you have some sort of autoloading mechanism as in Ruby on Rails.
Is there any good way to find where is a function being called in our codebase ?
There is a gem called Starscope (disclaimer: I am the author) which can list function calls in ruby code, among other things. It isn't perfect, since it can't handle crazy meta-programming, but it will find all the normal calls to a given function.
gem: https://rubygems.org/gems/starscope
github: https://github.com/eapache/starscope
user guide: https://github.com/eapache/starscope/blob/master/doc/USER_GUIDE.md
edit: Luc's answer is entirely accurate as far as it goes; I wrote Starscope specifically to be "Cscope for Ruby".
With ctags, no. It references functions declarations and definitions, not their uses.
Then it depends on the language.
cscope can help with C, but not with C++. With C++, you should have a look at clang based solutions : there is clang_indexer (and its many forks) (see vim-clang to integrate it in vim), but I did found a few quirks ; it seems YouCompleteMe does a few things related to code indexation (as it provides GotoImplementation/Declaration commands).
For other languages, you may have dedicated plugins. But for sure, there is always grep (and many plugins that integrates it)
In the python world, there are a number of alternative python interpreters that add cool additional features. One particularly useful example is bpython, which adds dynamic syntax highlighting, automatically pulls documentation, and displays live autocomplete information. In the Ruby world, I have yet to uncover any projects which add to the basic IRB interpreter even a subset of these features. Am I just not looking hard enough, or is this just something the Ruby community is lacking?
Use Pry: https://github.com/pry/pry
Let's you:
start sessions at runtime
view method source code
view method documentation (not using RI so you dont have to pre-generate it)
pop in and out of different contexts
syntax highlighting
gist integration
view and replay history
open editors to edit method using edit-method obj.my_method syntax
A tonne more great and original features
What a coincidence. Rubyflow just yesterday announced the irbtools gem, which is a meta-gem containing lots of cool irb enhancement gems. It contains:
Colorized and output as comment by wirb and fancy_irb
Nice IRB prompt and IRB’s auto indention
Includes stdlib’s FileUtils: ls, cd, pwd, ln_s, rm, mkdir, touch, cat
Many debugging helpers: ap, q, o, c, y, Object#m, Object#d
ap – awesome_print
q – like p, but on one line
Object#m – ordered method list (takes integer parameter: level of nesting)
Object#d – puts the object, returns self (using tap)
“Magical” information constants: Info, OS, RubyVersion, RubyEngine
OS.windows?
RubyEngine.jruby?
RubyVersion.is.at_least? 1.9
Clipboard features: copy and paste
also available: copy_input and copy_output for session history
Call vim (or another supported editor) to edit a file, close it and it gets loaded into your current irb session, powered by interactive_editor
Another way of live loading into irb: sketches
Highlight a string with olorize('string') or a file with ray('path'), powered by coderay
Displays ActiveRecord database entries as tables with hirb
Restart irb with reset! or change the Ruby version with the use method and rvm!
Includes the current directory in the load path (was removed in 1.9.2 for security reasons, but is pretty annoying in IRB)
Shorter requiring like this: rq:mathn
And rerquiring with rrq
Try the included Object#ri helper, powered by ori!
Access to a lot of more commands with boson – call commands to get started
There are nice screenshots on the irbtools page. One nice thing about it is that each of the utilities can stand on its own, in case you just want to cherry-pick one or two features.
2013 Update
Since I wrote this, Pry has become a popular IRB replacement. It doesn't do as much as irbtools out of the box, but it extensible with plugin gems that add cool features. You can browse source code like it was a unix directory:
pry(main)> cd FileUtils
pry(FileUtils):1> show-method rm
From: /opt/ruby/lib/ruby/1.9.1/fileutils.rb # line 556:
Number of lines: 10
Owner: FileUtils
def rm(list, options = {})
fu_check_options options, OPT_TABLE['rm']
list = fu_list(list)
fu_output_message "rm#{options[:force] ? ' -f' : ''} #{list.join ' '}" if options[:verbose]
return if options[:noop]
list.each do |path|
remove_file path, options[:force]
end
end
pry(FileUtils):2>
You can also browse Ruby documentation, issue shell commands, and if you're a Rails user, you can use the pry-rails gem to get pry in your Rails console. There's also a way to hook it into Sinatra and use it with Heroku.
There's ample documentation--there are a bunch of screencasts including a Railscast. It's definitely worth looking into.
I've never heard of a (popular) alternative to IRB, but there certainly are several useful gems that make the IRB experience a lot nicer:
awesome_print pretty prints Ruby objects with indentation and coloring, very useful when trying to look at nested hashes or other complicated data structures.
looksee is pretty awesome too, it provides a method lp (lookup path) that shows you where a Ruby object gets its methods from (class, superclass etc).
Sketches connects your editor and IRB, so it's especially useful if you are the type who likes interactive development. Emacs with inf-ruby is also good for this.
Wirble is a whole set of IRB enhancements, like tab completion and syntax highlighting. There's also Utility Belt, but I don't personally use that, so can't comment on its features.
Edit
I forgot Hirb, which is very useful for e.g. showing the results of an ActiveRecord query in a Rails console.
There's http://github.com/alloy/dietrb.
JRuby ships with jirb_swing, which provides code completion.
There's not much in the area of alternatives to irb, but there are a couple of gems that add useful features to irb.
Most notably wirble, which, among other things, gives you colored output (not input though) and a history that goes beyond the current session.
Check out ripl, a modular irb alternative which is designed to be extendable. You may also get some answers from Is there something like bpython for Ruby?.
rib is a modular and light Ruby interactive shell.
It, like Pry, uses Ruby's parser so has consistent behavior with Ruby thus less bugs (e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/39271791/474597)
It is modular so one can easily extend it with more functionalities.
It is also still actively maintained as of 2016.
I made a pure Ruby console, inspired off Google Chrome's JavaScript console.
https://github.com/sancarn/RubyConsole
It's still mostly a WIP project as I keep finding bugs with the current algorithm, however I'm building it to be 1.9.3+ compatible.
Most of the code I write is in Ruby, and every once in a while, I make some typo which only gets caught after a while. This is irritating when I have my scripts running long tasks, and return to find I had a typo.
Is there an actively developed lint tool for Ruby that could help me overcome this? Would it be possible to use it across a system that works with a lot of source files, some of them loaded dynamically?
Take this snippet as an example:
a = 20
b = 30
puts c
To win bounty, show me a tool that will detect the c variable as not created/undefined.
ruby -c myfile.rb will check for correct Ruby syntax.
Reek checks Ruby code for common code smells.
Roodi checks Ruby code for common object-oriented design issues.
Flog can warn you about unusually complex code.
[Plug] If your project is in a public Github repository, Caliper can run the latter three tools and others on your code every time you commit. (Disclaimer: I work on Caliper)
You could give Diamondback Ruby a try. It does a static typecheck of Ruby code, and will thus blame you for using an undefined variable.
While DRuby is an ongoing research project, it already works quite well for small, self-contained Ruby scripts. Currently, it is unable to analyze much of the Ruby standard library “out-of-the-box”. Currently they are working toward typing Ruby on Rails (see their most recent papers).
RubyMine (http://www.jetbrains.com/ruby) does the trick:
alt text http://img707.imageshack.us/img707/5688/31911448.png
None of the below will do all the analysis that RubyMine does.
NetBeans Ruby pack
Aptana RadRails
gVIM (with syntastic plugin by scrooloose)
Each of these has the capacity to identify syntax errors such as wrong number of parentheses, too many defs, ends, braces, etc. But none will identify invalid method calls the way RubyMine does.
Here's why: it's difficult.
Since Ruby is extremely dynamic (and methods like 'c' could easily be generated on the fly), any editor that tries to identify non-existent variables/methods would need to have a large part of the entire evironment loaded and multiple program flow paths constantly tested in order to get accurate 'validity' results. This is much more difficult than in Java where almost all programming is static (at least it was when I dropped that hat).
This ability to easily generate methods on the fly is one of the reasons the community holds testing to such high esteem. I really do reccomend you try testing as well.
Have a look at RuboCop. It is a Ruby code style checker based on the Ruby Style Guide. It's maintained pretty actively and supports all major Ruby implementations. It works well with Ruby 1.9 and 2.0 and has great Emacs integration.
Yes. Test::Unit
Ok, I know you already know this and that in some sense this is a non-helpful answer, but you do bring up the negative consequence of duck typing, that there kind of is (at this time) no way around just writing more tests than something like Java might need.
So, for the record, see Test::Unit in the Ruby Standard Library or one of the other test frameworks.
Having unit tests that you can run and rerun is the best way to catch errors, and you do need more of them (tests, not errors :-) in dynamic languages like Ruby...
nitpick might be what you're lookng for.
With this code:
class MyString < String
def awesome
self.gsub("e", "3").gsub("l", "1").uppercase
end
end
puts MyString.new("leet").awesome
... it outputs:
$ nitpick misspelling.rb
*** Nitpick had trouble loading "misspelling.rb":
NoMethodError undefined method `uppercase' for "133t":MyString
Nothing to report boss! He's clean!
Have not used it yet, but sounds promising (will update when I've tested this).
https://github.com/michaeledgar/laser
Static analysis and style linter for Ruby code.
Pelusa is nice, but is working in rubinius only. This shouln't be a proplem for people familar with RVM though.
avdi#lazarus:~$ irb
>> a = 20
=> 20
>> b = 30
=> 30
>> puts c
NameError: undefined local variable or method `c' for main:Object
from (irb):3
>>
There ya go, the tool is called "IRB". Do I get the bounty?
I'm only half joking. I wrote this second answer to hopefully drive home the point that in Ruby, if you want to know that something is defined or not, you have to run the code.
What are the things you wish Ruby (and more generally the Ruby community) would improve?
I read somewhere that Ruby is the love-child of Smalltalk and LISP, with Miss Perl as the Nanny.
I have a lot of respect for Ruby's parents, but I'm not sure I like the influence Miss Perl had on the child. Specifically, I don't like the predefined variables: I need a cheat sheet to know what they mean. You could say "just don't use them". Well, I don't... but other people do. And when I download a plugin on the Web, I have no choice but to fetch my cheat-sheet if I ever need to go and touch the source code. I just wish they would remove those from the language itself.
Also, I think that Ruby is too much of a moving target. My code breaks on every new Ruby upgrade, even on minor releases. This is true also of Ruby on Rails and most Rails plugins I have worked with: they just change all the time, and nobody seems to care whether the changes break everything or not. IMHO, although I love a lot of things in Ruby, this lack of stability is almost a show-stopper.
I wish people would consider backward compatibility between minor releases as an unbreakable rule when releasing a new language (or library or framework) version.
I wish that some of the lesser used modules of the standard library were documented.
Make require-ing files less painful. Don't ask me how, but maybe have one file dedicated to knowing the paths involved and just get rid of the relative path crud from everything else.
Getting rid of the artificial distinction between Modules and Classes would be nice.
Both Modules and Classes are Namespaces. Modules are also Mixins, while Classes aren't. Classes can also be instantiated while Modules can't. This distinction is unnecessary. Just get rid of Modules and allow Classes to be used as Mixins.
An example of a language where this works is Newspeak.
I'd appreciate being able to install ruby 1.9 as an RPM rather than having to use the source.
Make Ruby completely Message Sending based, get rid of everything that is not a message send: local variables, global variables, instance variables, class hierarchy variables, constants, magic globals, magic constants, builtin operators, builtin keywords, even literals. See Self, Ioke or Newspeak for the incredible power and elegance this gains.
I wish they would get rid of the predefined variables: $!, $&, $+, etc.
I would like to have support for static compile-time metaprogramming. The Converge Programming Language might be a good starting point.
Replace the Mixin system with a Traits system.
Replace Exceptions with a Common Lisp style Conditions system.