John Carter writes:

# I have just been reading Martin Fowler's "Refactoring" and am feeling
# particular inspired by it.
# 
# There was, on this list, a very long thread on a Ruby browser, but I
# couldn't find the bottom line on it...
# 
# Is there someone somewhere developing a Ruby refactoring browser?

As far as I know, nothing beyond a couple of interesting proof of concept 
demos have been done (one based on SourceNavigator and one based on 
Ruby/Tk). I think there are some unresolved questions of how to deal with 
some items (singletons, IIRC) and on what Ruby language extensions should 
be requested/implemented to support a good general purpose Ruby browser. I 
expect that it would not take much of a stimulus to resolve these issues.

Then there was the issue of whether Tk was a tolerable GUI choice for 
something that would hopefully grow into a full-fledged industrial-strengh 
IDE.  Or would it be better to build on Komodo, which is Mozilla-based, 
and is now in the alpha release stage. Or would it be better to do this 
with Ruby/wxWindows. 

This last option is my current favorite option, largely based on 
favorable-to-fanatically enthusiastic but still seemingly reasonable 
reasons/reports from the Python/wxWindows community. Quite apart from its 
utility for a Ruby browser, I think Ruby/wxWindows would be a tremendously 
useful addition to Ruby in general. (I am very tempted to [personally] 
offer a reward to get someone to produce Ruby/wxWindows, since I think it 
would probably take too much time to figure out on my own, relative to my 
very limited spare time at the moment.)

By the way, what specific capabilities should a Ruby *refractoring* 
browser (minimally, maximally) have?

Conrad Schneiker
(This note is unofficial and subject to improvement without notice.)