I've recently started to use Netbeans at work for my Ruby development (I fancy having a go with RubyMine, but Netbeans will do for now. RubyMine looks v similar but is more Rubyesque (of course) and permits easier remote debugging).
One issue with the Windows installation is that the ruby-debug-ide gem will not install; it's unable to build from native extensions. The fix I found is in the following comment (not in the main article):
http://www.definenull.com/content/netbeans-6-ruby-fast-debugger#comment-251
If that comment goes, here are the instructions:
RubyInstaller DevKit fixes this
If you install Ruby using RubyInstaller (http://rubyinstaller.org/download.html), and next install RubyInstaller Development Kit (http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/development-kit) on top of that, then the NetBeans "Install Fast Debugger" feature works without problems.
The RubyInstaller Development Kit provides some standalone elements of MinGW for compiling Ruby native C extensions.
Joe Howse
So basically, install the DevKit and then the gem installation from inside Netbeans works fine. Thanks to "Joe Howse"!
For details of the installation alongside Ruby 1.9.x (there are xxxxx19 versions of most of the Gems involved as the 1.8.x versions don't work) see here.
Although I still couldn't get it to work inside of Netbeans - 'debugger' might be the option.
Also, do install the correct DevKit version! Stack-Overflow.
UPDATE : Ruby 1.9.3
For details of the installation alongside Ruby 1.9.x (there are xxxxx19 versions of most of the Gems involved as the 1.8.x versions don't work) see here.
Although I still couldn't get it to work inside of Netbeans - 'debugger' might be the option.
Also, do install the correct DevKit version! Stack-Overflow.
