rdoc

Can be used for quick navigation to the rdoc documentation. You can then define a search shortcut for your browser. E.g. in Firefox connect ‘shortcut:rdoc’ to http://localhost:8808/rdoc?q=%s template. Then you can directly open the ActionPack documentation by typing ‘rdoc actionp’. If there are multiple hits for the search term, they are presented as a list with links.

Search algorithm aims for an intuitive search:

1. first try to find the gems and documentation folders which name starts with the search term

2. search for entries, that contain the search term

3. show all the gems

If there is only one search hit, user is immediately redirected to the documentation for the particular gem, otherwise a list with results is shown.

Additional trick - install documentation for Ruby core

Note: please adjust paths accordingly use for example ‘locate yaml.rb’ and ‘gem environment’ to identify directories, that are specific for your local installation

1. install Ruby sources

   cd /usr/src
   sudo apt-get source ruby
   

2. generate documentation

   rdoc -o /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/doc/core/rdoc \
     /usr/lib/ruby/1.8 ruby1.8-1.8.7.72
   

By typing ‘rdoc core’ you can now access the core documentation