# Can we develop desktop application **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 10, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876 "2009-07-10T14:53:33Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 2:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/1 "2009-07-10T14:53:33Z")
Is ruby for developing web based applications only or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. If we do how can we do that. Regards, Rajkumar.Surabhi ---
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 3:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/2 "2009-07-10T15:00:35Z")
> or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. > If we do how can we do that. Not sure if “we” can do it 😉 But it is possible. There are bindings for ruby-qt ruby-gtk/gnome ruby-wxwidgets ruby-fox ruby-tk and so on and so forth. IMHO the best documentation is here: [http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/](http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/) ---
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 3:04pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/3 "2009-07-10T15:04:58Z")
On Fri, Jul 10, 2009 at 6:23 PM, Rajkumar Surabhi[removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Is ruby for developing web based applications only > > or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. > If we do how can we do that. There are several excellent gui toolkit bindings for ruby, including all the major ones (Qt, Gtk, Wx, Fox, Tk). Also Monkeybars is a higher-level toolkit on top of Swing, for JRuby. And Shoes is a complete GUI-development toolkit that includes a forked version of ruby. martin ---
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 6:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/4 "2009-07-10T18:16:06Z")
Rajkumar S. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > Is ruby for developing web based applications only > > or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. > If we do how can we do that. Depends what you mean by desktop. Ruby is a scripting language. You can run a Ruby script on your local machine. To me, that’s a desktop application! It is true that Ruby became famous through Ruby on Rails, which makes web applications, but that’s just a kind of accident. If you mean a GUI application (something double-clickable with an interface), then how you incorporate Ruby depends on what platform you’re using. There are various cross-platform solutions, which others have already mentioned. If you are aiming at just one platform, there may be other solutions for that platform. For example, on Mac OS X, you’d want to look at MacRuby. m. ---
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/5 "2009-07-10T15:29:30Z")
> or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. > If we do how can we do that. I’d recommend shoes or wxruby. =r ---
**Author:** ![mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/m/ed8c4c/32.png) [@mailtorajuit](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/mailtorajuit)\ **Post date:** [July 10, 2009, 11:19pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-we-develop-desktop-application/171876/6 "2009-07-10T23:19:58Z")
On Friday 10 July 2009 07:53:39 am Rajkumar S. wrote: > Is ruby for developing web based applications only > > or can we develop desktop applications with ruby. This question seems to be asked fairly often… ## Ruby is a general-purpose programming language. Like most such languages, there is no reason you couldn’t use it to write any kind of application about the only hard technical constraint you have is the speed of the implementation. To put it another way: JavaScript can be used to develop desktop applications. You could use Google Gears, or you could use KDE4’s scripting system, or you could extend something like spidermonkey. > If we do how can we do that. This is a much better question, though still one that could probably be Google’d first. It depends very much what you mean by “desktop applications”. There are many approaches, and a few of the replies helped with that – but the same is true for any other language. If you were using C/C++, you could use MFC, the Win32 API, GTK, wxwindows, Qt, raw X11, or anything in between. There are probably Ruby bindings for a few of those, and some nice higher-level libraries. And, technically, even a web application (yes, even Rails!) could be considered a “desktop application”. Just use sqlite for the database, bind it to localhost, and have it open itself on boot with Launchy. Unprofessional? Maybe, but I’ve seen nvidia do it for their firewall software – though they used Apache, and probably not Ruby.