Installable Mac Application

Ruby
1

Hi

I have a ruby (1.8.7) program that takes a config file and uses
appscript to
process files.
I run the program from the command line, but I want to give the app to a
friend and I don’t think they will be able to use the command line
successfully, or edit the config file manually.

I imagine a simple GUI would suffice as a control panel to edit the
config
file and launch the program.

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI
on
the Mac? My install would need to include all the necessary gems to run
the
app.

2

On Jan 20, 2011, at 20:33 , Jim F. wrote:

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI on
the Mac? My install would need to include all the necessary gems to run the
app.

I wrote such a thing back for Mac OS7-9 back in the day. It was called
DropUNIX and I’m sure the code floats around still. It targeted C, but
the idea is the same.

These days I’d prolly use macruby. IIRC, you can package macruby apps as
fully bundled apps.

3

Jim F. [email protected] writes:

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI on
the Mac?

RubyCocoa:

http://rubycocoa.sourceforge.net

sherm–

4

Hi

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Jose Hales-Garcia <
[email protected]> wrote:

You’re asking Mac specific questions which ruby-talk typically won’t
address. You can ask the MacRuby list and will get a more knowledgeable
response…

http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html

I’m interested more in packaging really. I don’t want to use MacRuby.
It’s
pure ruby, on a mac, but I can’t ask the user to install any gems. A
crude
solution would be to provide a link to a shell script that launched a
sinatra app and then did ‘open localhost:3000/myapp’, but I don’t think
that
would be the best way to do this.

I know Xcode can create GUI front ends for terminal applications. This
book discusses it…

Advanced Mac OS X
Programminghttp://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Mac-Programming-Core-Unix/dp/0974078514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250177988&sr=1-1

I’ll check this out.

Also, GUI installations for Mac are made with
PackageMakerhttp://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#documentation/DeveloperTools/Conceptual/PackageMakerUserGuide/Introduction/Introduction.html
.

Thanks for the link.

5

MacRuby is the best way to handle packaging of applications on a Mac.
This
is a topic that’s particularly important to me, and trust me, they’ve
got it
right.

You don’t need to ask your user to install anything: it bundles not only
your gems but also the ruby interpreter directly inside of the .app, so
they
need it and only it.

At this point, RubyCocoa is all but deprecated, as it’s what turned into
MacRuby, IIRC.

But seriously: use MacRuby. Hopefully, when the packaging gets a bit
better,
I’ll be able to recommend Shoes as well. Packaging is a weak point at
the
moment, though.