Quickly Load Rails Projects

03 August 2009

Here’s a huge Rails productivity tip. It’s a shell command that does the following:

Changes directory to a Rails project
Opens $EDITOR (set this as TextMate, MacVim, etc.)
Opens a tab for script/console
Opens a tab for logs
Names the tabs so switching between them is easier
Gives your Rails projects tab completion

It doesn’t start script/server because I use Passenger Preferences Pane -- this is another excellent productivity-increasing Rails-oriented secret.

Usage

Type r projectname.

Installation

I’ve designed this to be used with CDargs — there are macports and debian packages for it, so installation should be easy (port install cdargs).

CDargs makes it easy to bookmark directories. This sounds stupid but saves loads of time, especially as CDargs adds tab completion. Make sure you dig out cdargs-bash.sh from the CDargs source and add it to .bashrc.

Source this in ~/.bashrc or just paste it in:

alias ss='./script/server'                          # script/server
alias sc='./script/console'                         # script/console
 
# Opens a new tab with the cwd
function tab {
  osascript -e "
    tell application \"System Events\" to tell process \"Terminal\" to keystroke \"t\" using command down
    tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"cd $PWD\" in selected tab of the front window
  " > /dev/null 2>&1
}
 
function as_terminal_cmd {
  osascript -e "tell application \"Terminal\" to do script \"$1\" in selected tab of the front window" 
}
 
function terminal_title {
  if [[ $# -eq 1 && -n "$@" ]];
  then
    printf "\e]0;${@}\a";
  fi
}
 
# cd into a rails dir, start mvim and rails console
function r {
  cv $1
  as_terminal_cmd "terminal_title Log"
  as_terminal_cmd "tail -f log/development.log"
  tab
  as_terminal_cmd "terminal_title Console"
  as_terminal_cmd "sc"
  tab
  $EDITOR &
}

if [ -e "$DOTFILES/lib/cdargs-bash.sh" ]; then
  . "$DOTFILES/lib/cdargs-bash.sh"
  # Use the completion from cdargs for my "r" alias
  complete $nospace -S / -X '*/' -F _cdargs_aliases r
fi

I have a $DOTFILES shell variable for loading cdargs-bash.sh. That's just where I dump my settings so moving them to other computers is quicker. Replace this or set it with the path to cdargs-bash.sh. You can remove that section if you don't want to use CDargs.

See Gist 159680 for updates and notes

This has been designed for use with Mac OS. If you make a version for your OS post it in the comments and I’ll add links here.