Browsing Ruby code a la Smalltalk?

Question

What's the closest equivalent of the Smalltalk Class Hierarchy Browser? I've seen some workarounds like this, but it seems not scriptable.

Answer 1

There really isn't one, at least not with a Smalltalk-like UI including static and dynamic behaviors.

Eclipse and IntelliJ both have some structural insight. Eclipse has a view sort-of similar to a browser. The biggest issue with either is that unless you're working on live objects (e.g., debugging) you won't necessarily know all of an object's behavior since some is defined at runtime. A static view without an image or partial runtime cannot give a complete picture.

IntelliJ does a decent job of figuring things out. For example, a class with an attr_accessor :foo will show the @foo instance variable in the structure pane. I'm not sure you can configure the UI around to be more browser-like, though; Eclipse is better in this regard–each "level" can be added separately.

^{(Since 1994-95ish I've felt we kept taking steps backwards, it's only recently that IDEs have gotten smart enough to give me back some of the productivity I had with Smalltalk/Lisp. Smalltalk's image-based runtime confers a lot of advantages in this regard.)}