I was fairly excited this past week to have some time to take another look at JRuby and the progress that has been made around deploying Rails applications as web applications in a Java application server. All I can say is... wow!

To give you some idea, it took me less than 30 minutes to generate a simple (single model) CRUD application, package it as a web application archive, and deploy it inside a WebLogic application server using an existing DataSource connected to an Oracle database. With JRuby at 1.0 and the ability to integrate Rails applications into an existing infrastructure, many closet Rubyists may have a way to easily introduce Rails into their work environment.

By the way... stay tuned and I'll fill you in on some details of that "war" deployment.

Tim Pope, the author of rails.vim, has put a damper on Mac OS X sales in the Rails community. No longer will we be able to convince our significant others of the need to fork out $2-3,000 for the latest MacBook Pro so we can run a $50 text editor. By bestowing TextMate-like abilities on the original power editor, Vim, Rails developers now have a choice that runs cross-platform. This means you can work with the same development environment at work, home, and on the go.

The downside is that it is not "currently" wrapped-up in a neat package as a one-click install. In addition, if you are unfamiliar with Vim, there is a learning curve associated with the multi-mode behavior of the editor. It is for those individuals that I have put together a rails.vim tutorial which will walk you through installing and configuring rails.vim in gVim, a GUI version of Vim. After setting up your environment, the tutorial explores the various features of rails.vim by walking through the steps taken when developing a new Rails application. Hopefully, by the time you reach the end, you will have an appreciation for the power and simplicity of rails.vim.

"Rails on Windows" is a new member of O'Reilly's Short Cut series and targets a narrow audience - aspiring Rails developers who work in Microsoft Windows. While the majority of Rails developers may actually be using Windows at this point, this book is really only for those who are thinking of or just started writing Rails applications. Those developers who are already writing Rails applications in Windows might find a useful tip or two but the value of the Short Cut is greatly reduced for them. Read the full review.

Depending on your Ruby installation, irb may not provide access to installed RubyGems by default. Trying to use a gem will generate an error.

require 'rake'
LoadError: no such file to load -- rake
from (irb):1:in `require'
from (irb):1

This means you have to remember to require your gems as follows.

require 'rubygems'
=> true
require 'rake'
=> true

There are a couple of ways to correct this. One is to start irb with the option "-rubygems". You still have to remember to specify the option so a better way to handle this is to use the irb configuration file. This is a Ruby script that runs when starting irb. You can include the require 'rubygems' statement in the script so you never have to remember to type it again.

On Mac and Linux (Unix based systems), name the configuration file '.irbrc' and put it in your home directory. On Windows, you can create the .irbrc file anywhere you like but typically it is placed your %USERPROFILE% directory, usually "C:\Documents and Settings\Your Name". After creating the file, it is important to set an environment variable named HOME which points to that directory.

Here's a must read Short Cut from the Addison-Wesley Professional Ruby Series to add to your summer reading plan - "Rails Routing" by author David A. Black. You wouldn't think that the routing system in Rails would need a 115 page book dedicated to it but after reading "Rails Routing", you will have a deeper appreciation for how the routing system and RESTful routes can help you clean up your controllers and write more maintainable Rails applications. Read the full review.

Apress has released "Practical Ruby Gems" by author David Berube. This book takes a brief look at the Ruby Gem package-management system for those who may not be familiar with it and includes information on creating and distributing your own gems. The core of the book, however, is a look at the "practical" Ruby gems available at RubyForge and how they can be used to speed up your Ruby and Ruby on Rails development. Read the full review.

Hey! Any web designers out there who have been lurking around Ruby and Ruby on Rails sites but haven't committed yet? If so, you might be interested in a recent offering from the publisher Friends of Ed. Rails Solutions is a book written for web designers who haven't worked with programming languages before and it might be a good start for you. Read the full review.

With RailsConf 2007 only two days away, the folks at Rails Envy are gearing up by taking potshots at Java and PHP developers in the style of the Mac vs. PC ads. I'm certain that this is only the beginning.

Learn how to take advantage of the Rails 1.2 RESTful API with this concise but informative Short Cut PDF from the Addison-Wesley Ruby Series titled "Rails Refactoring to Resources". Author Trotter Cashion introduces the reader to REST and how Rails allows for URLs representing conceptual resources (top 10 books) to be delivered as concrete resources (top 10 books xml) using content type negotiation. He then explains the key concept of RESTful Rails, the create, read, update, and delete (CRUD) operations of one controller to one model relationship, showing how this is often violated through model relationships. Read the full review.

I recently came across a post comparing the performance of various Ruby interpreters. While the stats bode well for those who are interested in a faster Ruby, I was more intrigued by the number of interpreters that are under development. If you are new to Ruby and are not sure just what an interpreter is, you might find this brief definition helpful.

In addition to the standard 1.8 Ruby interpreter most of us use, there are the following.

• 1.9 version of standard Ruby
• YARV (Yet Another Ruby Version)
• JRuby using Java
• Ruby.NET using .NET (of course)
• Rubinius
• Cardinal

While some may see this as a fracturing of the Ruby community, I think it shows that Ruby will only continue to innovate. For example, the performance numbers for YARV show an average performance increase of 300%. How can that be a bad thing?