This week I was invited by the RadRails guys on #radrails to join their team as a committer and I've gladly accepted. Thanks guys! RadRails is a relatively new IDE for the relatively new Ruby on Rails web platform. RadRails is Java software built on the Eclipse Rich Client Platform (RCP).

I have a stakeholder interest in RadRails because I use it for my Ruby on Rails development. I like that it works on both Windows and my Mac and has nice Subversion integration, among other things. The fact that I'm already really familiar with Eclipse doesn't hurt either. I'm pretty pleased with RadRails but I wanted to see if I could help improve its quality and stability.

The invitation to be a committer was given after I submitted some Ant scripts to build RadRails. I gained a lot of familiarity with RCP proejct structure and Ant while working on Durham/AudioMan and subsequent Eclipse Rich Client Platform projects. Since the Durham Ant scripts were under the EPL, I just moved them over to RadRails with some changes.

The Ant scripts could be used by developers but mainly they will be used by a build machine to automate the build process. Automating the build process is important because it removes a lot of the human error that happens with 'manual' building of packages and it introduces consistency in the build process, both of which ultimately improve the quality of the final product. Build scripts also ensure that you can go back and built something three versions ago and it'll work just like the original.

When this is all in place I'll be one happy Software Engineer (B.Eng).

What else am I up to? I'm still working on fanconcert and looking for full time work in either Java+Eclipse+RCP or Ruby+Rails+DHTML. If you know of any opportunities in those two areas, especially in Ottawa, you can give me a shout: blog(at)ryanlowe(dot)ca.