phipster

Overcame a minor irritation - I kept getting an HTTP 500 internal server error from Aptana’s built-in help documentation server after installing Aptana on my Windows Vista system. After some fiddling around with the Help Server’s host name and port, I found the sweet spot by setting the host name to “localhost” and leaving the port number field blank, allowing Aptana to pick its own value.

A persistent error in the integration of the Subclipse SVN client with Aptana IDE prevents the initial import of a project into an SVN repository. I don’t think the problem lies with Subclipse, the client plugin, as much as a bug somewhere in the guts of the Eclipse IDE. I worked around the problem by using TortoiseSVN to perform the initial repository import, then carrying on with Subclipse in Aptana IDE.

To reproduce the problem, right-click on your project folder in the Navigator panel, then select the “Share Project…” wizard from the “Team” element of the project context menu. Aptana will display an error dialog:

The error message reads “org.eclipse.team.internal.ui.wizards.ConfigureProjectWizard cannot be cast to org.tigris.subversion.subclipse.ui.wizards.sharing.SharingWizard”

A couple of other Aptanans reported encountering the same error after I submitted it to the Aptana user forum, but the Aptana team hasn’t come forth with a solution yet.

Here’s how I worked around the problem:

1. Download and install an SVN client, e.g. I use the TortoiseSVN Windows client on my Windows PC
2. Create the new project in Aptana, e.g. “MyApp”
3. Import the project to your SVN repository, e.g. “C:\rails\myapp” -> “svn://myhost.com/svn/rails/myapp/trunk”
4. Now that the code is safely tucked up in your repository, delete the contents of the project folder, either in Windows or from Aptana.
5. Back in Aptana, right-click in the Navigator pane then select “Import…” to open the project import dialog box. Follow the instructions to check out the contents of the trunk/ directory to a new Aptana project. [Note: modified this step to use Aptana instead of TortoiseSVN]
6. You should now see Aptana’s version of the SVN status hints overlaid on the project files and folders. As well, the project name will acquire the SVN repository path, e.g. [rails/myapp/trunk]
7. That’s it, you’re good to go! Now you can use Aptana’s SVN client to manage the project.

jEdit + RubyPlugin is a great, simple Rails development tool, but I was getting annoyed today by the need to open two console windows (one to run Mongrel, another to do rails config or rake work), a Web browser and jEdit, then cd to the depot application folder and manually fire up the Mongrel server every time I wanted to do a little more work on the AWDWR depot tutorial.

I thought about writing up a Windows batch file to start up all this stuff for me, then I realized that I would be cobbling together more or less the environment RadRails provides out of the box.

Since I was well into the depot demo application I wanted to import it to RadRails. A quick Google search let me to Victor Kane’s AWebFactory - an amazing resource if you want to use RadRails while following along in AWDWR. Even more so, Victor illuminates many of the darker corners of MVC, OO and Rails that beginners might struggle with. Thanks for taking the time to write this invaluable guide, Victor!

Update (14 May 2007): Aptana has taken over development of Radrails, slowly integrating it into their Eclipse-based Web development IDE. The Aptana team and community are breathing new life into Radrails.