Ruby / Rails alternative to PHP print_r() and var_dump()

Speeding web development with Apache Ant

Modern web development includes many iterations. Bigger project have more iterations and as project is nearing completion, these iterations endure for shorter time and are performed more often. With every new iteration I go thought similar process - for example: backup test database and copy it to local server, update database structure, update program code, fix bugs, preform tests, validate XHTML, deploy all changes to test server for client to see. *Apache Ant can help, automating repetitive tasks and reducing errors caused by human factor.*

source on Rails