We use a gem internally which is just a dependency to load even more dependencies which are helpful for developing/debugging Ruby (on Rails) applications. It also has some wrapper logic to maintain a Devkit-file to enable/disable components. They can get annoying... yeah I'm looking at you rack profiler :)
I don't know if it makes sense to release the gem but I will certainly unleash the list of productivity and here it is...
Must have
| pry | Powerful IRB replacement |
|---|---|
| pry-doc | provides MRI Core documentation and source code for pry |
| pry-nav | teaches Pry about step, next and continue commands |
| pry-byebug | (similar to pry-nav) Adds step, next, finish and continue commands and breakpoints to Pry using byebug. |
| pry-rails | Make Pry to your `rails console` |
| awesome_print | Pretty print object for nice debugging output (especially with pry) |
| xray-rails | Press a shortcut, click on whatever on your page, be in the view/partial |
| quiet_assets | Hides asset requests from your development.log |
Mail & Mailer
Just two in this categoy. I would always, always, always install letter_opener when working with production data on your machine. Who would work with production data? We.. ehhh... don't!
| letter_opener | Openes every delivered email in your browser, join the safe side ;) |
|---|---|
| mail_view | mailer preview in your browser, perfect for designing these shitty HTML constructs! |
| MailCatcher | Like a combination of the last two gems. "Catches mail and serves it through a dream." |
Other stuff
| bullet | help to kill N+1 queries and unused eager loading |
|---|---|
| better_errors | Don't know why they don't have Rails 4 route overview inside or why Rails doesn't have any of these cool features... Really weird error or stacktrace? Disable better_errors temporarly, that might help in edge cases. |
| binding_of_caller | Enables better_errors' awesome REPL right on your exception page! |
| rack-mini-profiler | Didn't really get the use of it and it can spam your javascript console but noteworthy |
| rails_best_practices | Provides executable to scan your app for improvements and vulnerabilities |
| brakeman | Powerful vulnerability scanner for rails applications |
| coffee-rails-source-maps | Enable source maps for coffeescript files |
| sass-rails-source-maps | Enable source maps for scss files |
What are source maps? The web inspector and the javascript console displays the position in the original source file rather then in the compiled version so you directly know where to start hunting the bugs!
Questions, suggestions or other cool gems we've missed? Leave a comment and let us know!
Eat bananas every day!