Hi all, I just started learning ruby. It’s nice, but I’m a bit worried
about the dependencies.
For example, if I write a ruby program and send it so someone else, does
that person need to have an interpreter installed? Is there any way
around it (something like writing a compiled launcher.exe and adding a
dll that handles the interpretation. I’m just guessing).
Also, I’ve downloaded Shoes gui toolkit and apparently, to make ruby
programs work with it I need to launch them from shoes.exe . Is that
normal? Is there any way around it (in the same situation as the
previous paragraph)?
Thanks for your replies.
hi Karolis,
this question has come up before, and there are others who can (and
hopefully will) answer it better than i - but from what i understand:
in general, yes, if you want to send a ruby script to someone, they
will need a ruby interpreter in order to use it. this really isn’t a
big deal, as ruby is easily installable in many operating systems
(including the Big Three…)
specifically, shoes does not require the user to have ruby installed,
because it comes bundled with an interpreter (making it a nice choice
for distribution.) i believe shoes also provides an easy way to create
executables from your code.
though i haven’t done it myself, i also think it’s possible to bundle
a version of ruby with any script you have written, so that you wouldn’t
require your user to have a separate ruby interpreter installed.
if you want to create .exe’s, this might be an interesting post to
look through…
http://www.ruby-forum.com/topic/187340