About FreeRIDE

• News
• FAQ
• Documentation
• ScreenShots
• [Download]
• RubyConf Slides
• History
• Future

Development

• User Contributed Plugins
• FreeRIDE Team
• Developer Docs
• [Mailing Lists]
• [Browse the code]
• [Report a bug]

Projects

• Summary Page
• FreeBASE
• Ruby Build
• Workspace
• GUI Framework
• Editing
• Internationalization
• Scripting
• Navigation
• Debugger
• Collaboration
• Refactoring
• Deployment
• Configuration
• Help System
• InternalTesting
• TestHarness
• OtherFeatures

About this site

• Text Formatting Rules
• How to start a page

Welcome to the FreeRIDE Project Wiki

This is the home page for FreeRIDE, a cross-platform IDE for the Ruby programming language. It is distributed under the same terms as Ruby itself. If this is your first visit here, please click on Preferences above to register so that your name can be associated with your changes and contributions.

2006-06-06 FreeRIDE 0.9.6 has been released!

2006-02-24 Suggestion for a new FreeRIDE icon

2006-01-19 FreeRIDE 0.9.5 has been released!

The 0.9.5 version of FreeRIDE is available for download. Go and get it [here]. The biggest new feature in 0.9.5 is true project support (thanks to Jonathan Maasland for the great work)! Plus bug fixes and a number of other features. Read FreeRIDE News for more details.

2005-04-11 FreeRIDE 0.9.4 hot from the press!

The very latest version of FreeRIDE is available for download. Go and get it [here]. 0.9.4 is a bug fix release and also introduces 2 new major features: context sensitive Ruby help (ri documentation) and code templates. See the [Release Notes] for more details. Have fun! And, as always, feedback and contributions are welcome

See older news items here

Getting Started

Unix (and Linux) Users: To run FreeRIDE you must have installed FOX, FXScintilla, and FXRuby -- see the Installing FreeRIDE section of UserDoc for details.

FreeBSD UNIX specifically: Update your ports tree to the most recent using CVS or CVSUp methods (see appropriate FreeBSD docs). Then run commands: 'cd $PORTSBASE/devel/freeride; make install'. This will install FreeRIDE as well as all necessary dependancies. PORTSBASE is usually '/usr/ports'.

Debian Users: For installation on Debian systems, read DebianInstall.

Windows Users: The download is a standard Windows installer that includes a private build of Ruby and all other required components (this will not interfere with your existing Ruby installation).

Mac OS X Users: FreeRIDE is available for OS X through DarwinPorts. Read FreeRIDE in DarwinPorts for details.

Here are the essential links:

• To download v0.7.0, go [here] (for Debian installations you should read DebianInstall, instead).

• For questions, use the FreeRIDE users [mailing list].

• To report bugs or request features, go [here].

In its current state, FreeRIDE cannot yet be called a real IDE. What is does have is a stable infrastructure with all the working plumbing needed for the hordes of anxious Ruby developers that want to create plugins to extend the functionality of FreeRIDE. The FreeRIDE team will be working on such FreeRIDE plugins that we will individually release to incrementally improve the FreeRIDE system. Periodically we will rollup these added plugins into new releases of FreeRIDE.

Even if you have not officially joined the FreeRIDE team you can still create plugins for you own use, share them with others, or send them to us and we will make them available for download from our project wiki. We may even ask for your permission to include them in the FreeRIDE core distribution.

To post your plugin for sharing with others, just update the UserPlugins page with a description of your plugin and a download link. If you want us to host the download files, send them in an email attachment to CurtHibbs or LaurentJulliard.

2003-07-10 Version 0.9.0 of FreeBASE Released!

The FreeRIDE team has broken out the FreeBASE plugin architecture into a separate download. FreeBASE is the plugin subsystem of FreeRIDE, but is also a generally useful framework for constructing and deploying plugin-based solutions. The FreeBASE download comes with two sample plugins raa_webrick which utilizes the [WEBrick] HTTP server to provide a pluggable HTTP service architecture and raa_xmlrpc4r which utilizes the [XML-RPC Ruby] library to provide rpcd support in a pluggable manner. Both of these plugins require their respective libraries to be installed for the plugins to function. If you want a plugin-based approach to your Ruby projects, you can download FreeBASE [here].

Quick Start

• The UserStart page page contains everything you need to know to download, install and set up FreeRIDE as fast as possible.

• The DeveloperStart page contains everything you need to know to get started writing your own plugins to extend FreeRIDE.

FreeRIDE Overview

FreeRIDE aims to be a full-featured, first-class IDE on a par with those available for other languages, with all the best-of-breed features that you would expect in a high-end IDE. You can see some screenshots here.

Some of FreeRIDE's features include:

• Multi-file editing
• Syntax highlighting
• Auto-indenting
• Code Folding
• Source navigation by module, class, method, etc.
• Integrated debugging
• Written in Ruby for easy extension

Some planned features include:

• Full internationalization
• High-end refactoring support
• Remote pair programming

FreeRIDE Presentation Slides

The first public release of FreeRIDE (version 0.5.0) was announced at the Ruby Conference 2002 in Seattle, Washington, USA. Here are the slides from Rich Kilmer's FreeRIDE Presentation at RubyConf 2002.