Ruby on Rails, the famous web application framework which ignited Ruby's popularity surge, has now reached version 2.0, featuring some significant updates:

• Resources for RESTful development
• Multiview: the format of the template is now seperated from its rendering engine
• a module to work with HTTP Basic Authentication
• security enhancements
• ActiveRecord, the framework's ORM, saw significant performance improvements

and much more.

Netbeans, the cross-platform (Linux, Solaris, Mac, Windows) IDE and development platform built by Sun on the Java platform, and initiallly focusing on Java development, but now also actively supporting Ruby and Ruby on Rails (and their equivalent on the Java platform powered by JRuby) and C/C++, has reached version 6. It is now available in several bundles, each with a specific focus: Web and Java EE (with Glassfish and Tomcat part of the bundle), Mobility, Java SE, Ruby, C/C++. The complete bundle, with everything included, is also available.

During the development phase of this release, Netbeans has received positive press when compared to Eclipse, but also for its first-class Ruby support with completion and refactoring.

And as mentioned above, it is also a platform on which you can build your own rich applications.

Time to get it and check it for yourself!

Although IronRuby could already be downloaded, it is now available on rubyforge, with bug tracking and subversion repository. Instructions on getting the source form the subversion repository are available on RubyDoes.net.

Source:InfoQ

A first version of IronRuby is now available under Microsoft's short Permissive License. More info in John Lam's blog.