The plug-in provides functions such as syntax highlighting and editing of Ruby source code. Code completion for keywords and automatic completion of Ruby statements also is featured.

David Heinemeier Hansson, the creator of Ruby on Rails, greeted with enthusiasm Ruby's backing in IntelliJ.

"I think that's great news," Hansson said in an e-mail. "While I was doing Java, IntelliJ was the only thing that kept me from killing myself in frustration over the language. It still wasn't exactly happy programming, but IntelliJ helped mitigate some of the worst deficiencies of working in Java."

Other focuses of IntelliJ Idea 7.0 include further accommodations for the Spring Web framework, the Hibernate object persistence technology and the IBM Rational ClearCase version control product. Other technologies being accommodated in the upcoming release include the TestNG testing framework and the Maven build manager.

A preview, or Milestone, release of Version 7.0, also known as Selena, is planned for March.