vim is the best editor, also for RoR development

vim is a natural choice when you’re starting a new programming project (if you’re emacs or textmate adept – you can stop reading now 🙂 If you’re starting a Ruby on Rails project there are a couple of scripts/configurations you might want to install to make development with vim an even more pleasant experience.

1. Rails.vim by Tim Pope

To install just copy autoload/rails.vim, plugin/rails.vim, and doc/rails.txt to corresponding directories in ~/.vim

Vim scripts section has a full description of the functionality. Some highlights:

• Easy navigation between models, controllers and views with :Rmodel, :Rview, :Rcontroller commands
• Syntax highlighting
• CTRL-X CTRL-U for autocompletion
• :Rtree for project tree (see item 2)

2. NERD Tree by Marty Grenfell

Another must-have. Provides you with an easy way to navigate your project tree. Rails.vim nicely integrates with this one.

3. Colour schemas

If you want to save your eyes – use dark background when developing. Personally I prefer one of the standard vim themes – Desert , but Ocean Deep is also very good.

Copy theme file to ~/.vim/colors and then use

:colorscheme oceandeep

command to apply it.