Every Flavour Beans

Komodo is another excellent IDE for developing Ruby, Perl, Python, PHP and Tcl applications. Unlike it is with developing Ruby applications in Eclipse, no additional plugins need to be installed for Komodo; the Ruby support is inbuilt in this IDE. The IDE also has built-in support for integrating with source control software(in professional edition only) like CVS, Subversion and Perforce. All these software only need to be installed and in path for Komodo to start using it.

Downloading and Installing Komodo IDE

Download the Komodo IDE from the following page:

Buy Komodo Personal or Professional Edition
Try Komodo Personal or Professional Edition

After getting the software downloaded, the installation is as easy as running a couple of commands, as it comes with its own installation script. I recommend installing the IDE in the user’s home directory, but if multiple users access the computer, and want to use Komodo, then it can be installed in the system path too.
Run the following commands to install Komodo in the home directory:

(substitute the name of the downloaded file in the above command.)

Answer the questions asked by the installer(like where to install Komodo) or accept the default values. To add Komodo application to the path, add the following line to the user/system profile file(eg: ‘.bash_profile’):

export PATH=/home/user/komodo3.5:$PATH

Before Komodo can be used, a license has to be properly setup. You might have recieved a license file through email while purchasing the product; you can request a license for the trial version otherwise, if you want to evaluate the product. Once you get hold of a license, its time to install it. I have a license for Komodo Personal Edition and this is how I have installed it:

The file name of your license may be different depending upon the version of Komodo you are using.

After the installation is complete, a shortcut link for the Komodo IDE can be seen on the desktop. Click the icon to start the IDE(or run ‘komodo’ on the command line):

Create Ruby Applications Using Komodo IDE

Komodo IDE starts with the following welcome screen. From here you can create a new project, open the existing projects or browse through the various tutorials.

To browse through the Ruby tutorial and reference, click the “Ruby Tutorial” link in the main window. The tutorial will be opened in a new browser window.

Editing Ruby programs in Komodo in full screen mode looks like this(Syntax is colorised, indentation is done etc. Usual stuff expected of an IDE).

To create a new Ruby project in Komodo, select File->New Project, enter a name for the project and click the “Save” button. Now create a new Ruby file by selecting File->New File and selecting “Ruby” from “Templates”.

Type the program in the editor and save the file.

To evaluate simple Ruby expressions, Ruby interactive shell can be used from within Komodo. Select “Start New Ruby Shell” from the drop down box in the toolbar(or Tools->Interactive Shell menu) to start an interactive shell. Evaluate the Ruby expressions in the newly opened ‘Ruby Shell’ tab at the bottom of the window.

The Ruby interactive shell can be made the default shell in Komodo and be bound to F12 hot key from the Preferences(Edit->Preferences) dialog box.

End Notes

Komodo IDE provides a very rich program development environment for many popular scripting languages like Ruby, PHP, Perl, Python and Tcl. The personal(non-commercial) edition has most of the features of the professional edition and costs only tenth of its price. You may also get lucky and be able to find a discount coupon on the Internet to buy the personal edition of Komodo free of cost. Moreover, one license of Komodo(whether personal or professional) allows the software to be run on multiple platforms like Windows and GNU/Linux. If you want to use one IDE to develop programs on multiple platforms and using multiple scripting languages, without the hassle of installing additional plugins to get such a support, then Komodo is definitely worth a try.