You first need to complete the first five steps of my earlier post “Setting Up Rails Development Environment on Windows Vista/XP” which explain how to install Ruby, RubyGems, Ruby on Rails, Mongrel web server and MySQL database server on Microsoft Winodws Vista/XP. You can skip the last two steps(sixth and seventh) of that post which describe how to setup NetBeans 6.1 IDE for development with the Rails framework; continue with this post instead which explains how to setup the Eclipse-based IDE Aptana Studio for developing web applications using the Ruby on Rails framework.

Download and Install Aptana Studio and RadRails plugin

Download Aptana Studio IDE, run the installer and install it on your computer(or simply extract it if you downloaded the zip file).

Download Eclipse-based IDE called Aptana Studio with RadRails for Ruby on Rails

Run Aptana Studio. In the main window, you should see the start page of Aptana Studio(for some reason if you don’t, go to Help -> Aptana Studio Start Page…). Here you will see options to install various plugins for Aptana Studio like PHP plugin, Ruby on Rails plugin, Adobe AIR plugin etc. Click the “Install” button in the “Ruby on Rails” section.
 Select Aptana RadRails checkbox and select all the available optional features available for it.
Install RadRails plugin for Eclipse-based Aptana Studio IDE.

Install RadRails plugin for Eclipse-based Aptana Studio IDE.

I recommend that you leave the selected default location for installation as it is and proceed with the installation.
Install RadRails plugin for Eclipse-based Aptana Studio IDE.

Once the RadRails plugin is installed, it is time to configure Ruby installation in Aptana Studio. If you haven’t installed Ruby and Ruby on Rails yet, see my previous post.

Configure Ruby/Rails in Aptana Studio

If Ruby is installed in a location like “C:\ruby”, Aptana will automatically find the path and configure the Rails environment so you don’t have to worry about anything. If you have installed Ruby in a non-standard path where Aptana could not find it, then you need to set the path manually. To do so, go to Windows -> Preferences, expand the Ruby node in the left pane and select the Installed Interpreters item.

Set the path to installed Ruby interpreter in Aptana Studio RadRails IDE

Click the Add button and enter the details about your Ruby installation directory. Paths to all the other Ruby tools(e.g. rake, rails etc.) will be picked up automatically from this setting.

Set the path to installed Ruby interpreter in Aptana Studio RadRails IDE

That’s all we need to do to get Ruby on Rails framework configured with Aptana Studio IDE. We can now create new project and check out if everything is working properly. I have made a separate post to show how to create a basic Ruby on Rails web project in Aptana Studio and run it with the help of a lot of screenshots to introduce you to the most important features of the Aptana RadRails IDE for Rails based development, so check that out for more details.