[FR-announce] ANN: FreeRIDE 0.5.0 Release Candidate 2

[Curt Hibbs]

FreeRIDE 0.5.0 Release Candidate 2 is available for download. Go to
http://www.rubyide.org/ for details. If there are no major bugs reported in
the next couple weeks, then we will relabel this 0.5.0 final release.

In its current state, FreeRIDE cannot yet be called a real IDE. What is does
have is a stable infrastructure with all the working plumbing needed for the
hordes of anxious Ruby developers that want to create plugins to extend the
functionality of FreeRIDE. The FreeRIDE team will be working on such
FreeRIDE plugins that we will individually release to incrementally improve
the FreeRIDE system. Periodically we will rollup these added plugins into
new releases of FreeRIDE.

Even if you have not officially joined the FreeRIDE team you can still
create plugins for you own use, share them with others, or send them to us
and we will make them available for download from our project wiki. We may
even ask your for your permission to include them in the FreeRIDE core
distribution.


WHAT IS FREERIDE

FreeRIDE aims to be a full-featured, first-class IDE on a par with those
available for other languages, with all the best-of-breed features that you
would expect in a high-end IDE. You can see some screenshots here:

        http://www.rubyide.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ScreenShots

Some of FreeRIDE's features include:

- Multi-file editing
- Syntax highlighting
- Auto-indenting
- Source navigation by module, class, method, etc.
- Integrated debugging
- Written in Ruby for easy extension

Some planned features include:

- Full internationalization
- High-end refactoring support
- Remote pair programming


Have fun! I'm going to go get some sleep, now.  :-)

Curt