Not a Crystal expert, but the Marten tutorial mentions a `crystal play` command that will run a web-interface with an interactive "playground" that you can interact with your program's functionality in: https://martenframework.com/docs/getting-started/tutorial#in....
> Do you get a single binary for deployment which includes all assets, such as a .war?
I think they mean such as an .exe
> Is there debugger, similar to the one in rails?
What debugger are you using for Rails? In my experience Rails has been significantly lacking in a debugger (it's improved recently with the debug gem.)
A .war file is a Web Application Resource file. It’s a modification of a Jar file which is meant for easy deployment to Java servers.
Anyways the answer is, Crystal can be statically compiled in most circumstances. Last I checked OpenSSL was one of the exceptions, but it’s been a year or more since.
Amber packs all the static assets into the binary, Lucky doesn’t. I would doubt that Marten does. If not, you get your app server in one binary and the front end assets get deployed separately.
Regarding ruby debugging, byebug and pry have been the two approaches for a long time. Pry is a fancy line editor and doesn’t come with a true debugger, but it can be augmented with one. Byebug has full debugging but the interface is a bit archaic. Both work fine with Rails.
Interactive debugging with Crystal is still a bit of a pain, but LLDB works with a little fiddling.
Refresh/compile times, esp with more models and controllers
Do you get a single binary for deployment which includes all assets, such as a .war?
Is there debugger, similar to the one in rails?