Project

Basics

Whatever you do in RubyMine, you do that in the context of a project. A project is an organizational unit that represents a complete software solution. It serves as a basis for coding assistance, bulk refactoring, coding style consistency, and so on.

Project files

A project in RubyMine is represented in the Directory Based Format. A project directory is marked with icon.

Such project directory contains the .idea directory, with the following files:

• .iml file that describes the project structure.

• workspace.xml file that contains your workspace preferences.

• A number of xml files. Each xml file is responsible for its own set of settings, that can be recognized by its name: projectCodeStyle.xml, encodings.xml, vcs.xml, and so on.

  Thus, for example, adding a new run/debug configuration and changing encoding will affect two different xml files. This helps avoid merge conflicts when the project settings are stored in a version control system and modified by the different team members.

All the settings files in the .idea directory should be put under version control except workspace.xml, which stores your local preferences. The workspace.xml file should be marked as ignored by VCS.

.idea directory is not visible in the Project view of the Project Tool Window.

Project types

The directory structure of each project contains the .idea directory for the RubyMine-specific settings and the project file, and libraries.

RubyMine suggests the following types of projects:

• Empty project is intended for pure Ruby programming. The directory structure of such project contains the .idea directory for the RubyMine-specific settings and the project file, and libraries.

  Create a plain Ruby project as described in the Creating and running your first Ruby project section.

• Rails application intended for the Ruby-on-Rails development. This project type contains the specific infrastructure of the Rails applications, and all the necessary artifacts. For the Rails applications, RubyMine provides a dedicated view in the Project tool window.

  Create a Rails application as described in the Creating and running your first Rails application topic.

• Rails mountable engine is intended for the development of the Rails applications to be used as plugins in the other Rails applications. This project type contains the specific infrastructure of the Rails and Rails engine applications, and all the necessary artifacts. For the projects of this type, RubyMine provides Rails view in the Project tool window.

• Gem application project for developing, building and pushing gems to github. This project type provides the necessary infrastructure and artifacts, required for creating gems.

• Client-side projects HTML5 Boilerplate, Bootstrap, and Foundation.

  For the client-side applications, RubyMine creates specific infrastructure, with the required files and directories.

  Create a project.