As a Windows Vista and XP user there is not quite the same options as with a Mac or Linux.
At the moment I have avoided using an IDE. It may be somewhat illogical but if the “core” Rails developers can use TextMate then I think I should be able to use a similar editor.
My set up is covered at this blog post of A Mac-esque Rails Development Environment on Windows and I decribe some of the aspects below.
Cygwin allows me to run the Linux version of Rails. At the moment I am not really sure if this is a big advantage compared with using the Windows distribution of Rails. Cygwin is a bit fussy to setup and update, especially for things like adding the C compiler required for Sqlite.
Sqlite is the database I used for development. I have found this a great simple to use database. As of Rails 2.0.2 it is the default as described below
Most importantly is SQLite3 as the new database we’ll configure for by default when you run the rails generation command without any specification. This change comes as SQLite3 is simply an easier out of the box experience than MySQL.
I am currently using the E Text Editor however I am looking very seriously at Intype but more on this in another post.
Console2 is an important part of the setup given the amount of Rails work that is focussed around the command line. It takes a bit to setup but is well worth it. I find with Source Forge it is hard to know which version to run but I am running the lastest beta which is 2.00.139.
