Remote visual debugging with RubyMine 4.5 / 5

This post is already outdated. For RubMine 6 you should look at this one: RubyMine 6.0 Remote Ruby SDK + debugging

I like to use Vagrant for projects I'm working on.

I always thought that using virtual machines make you do compromises at least for visual debugging. But this is not the case for developing Ruby (and Rails) applications with RubyMine.

You'll need to forward another port on your VM. If you're using Vagrant too, this is just one line of configuration inside your Vagrantfile

config.vm.forward_port 1234, 1234

Install ruby-debug-ide gem on your VM server

gem install ruby-debug-ide --pre --no-ri --no-rdoc
gem install debugger --no-ri --no-rdoc

Inside RubyMine add new run/debug configuration. Run -> Edit configurations... -> Add new configuration (+ sign) -> Ruby remote debug
Correctly set your remote root and local root folders.

To run your Rails app in debug mode on your VM you need to run it with rdebug-ide command. Beware to set correct host or just set it to 0.0.0.0 which will listen to all connections on port 1234.

rdebug-ide --port 1234 --dispatcher-port 26162 -h 0.0.0.0 -- script/rails server

When Rails app is running you can set breaking points inside RubyMine with clicking on a pane, left from line of code you want to debug. Debugger should stop execution on that line when you'll make a right request.

I haven't found any good example how to use remote debugger for Rails applications so I've written this post. I hope you find it useful.