I don’t know much about the NetBeans world, Eclipse contributor and
fanboy
that I am. I do know that in my Eclipse plugin Groovy Monkey, I have
enabled JRuby as one of the languages that you can write scripts for. I
have also tested the plugin with an Eclipse distribution as small as the
Eclipse RCP.
Why might that relate to your question? Well Eclipse is run on an OSGi
container (one of its strengths IMHO) and the Eclipse RCP is an OSGi
container with a couple of megabytes of Eclipse bundles like resources,
core, runtime and SWT/JFace. I have put thought into extending Groovy
Monkey down to just the bare bones OSGi container, but haven’t had the
time
or really the push to get it done.
As far as using JRuby on OSGi and writing bundles in OSGi, I am not so
certain. I know it is possible for the Groovy language for instance,
and I
wrote a blog entry on the issues concerning that:
http://iacobus.blogspot.com/2007/03/add-groovy-to-your-eclipse-plugin.html
Still I know alot of this is specific to Groovy and the Eclipse
platform,
but hey the Eclipse platform running on Equinox (Eclipse’s OSGi
container)
is the number one example of an OSGi container (I’m sure to a bit of
chagrin
to OSGi folks like Peter Kriens).
In my opinion, if the JRuby compiler takes Ruby scripts and produces
byte
code that can be packaged in an OSGi bundle and you provide the JRuby
runtime as an OSGi library bundle for that container, it should work.
Another aside, take a look at Glimmer. It is a SWT builder plugin for
Eclipse that allows you to write SWT/JFace code in Ruby. I have a mind
to
try to incorporate it into Groovy Monkey. The URL for glimmer is:
http://www.eclipse.org/glimmer/
The author for Glimmer is Andy M. and he blogs about it at:
http://andymaleh.blogspot.com/
So there should be some examples, sorry they are all Eclipse specific.
I
would be curious to know if there is any activity of this sort on the
NetBeans side of the world.
Thanks,
James E. Ervin, IV
A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion,
butcher a
hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts,
build
a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders,
cooperate,
act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program
a
computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Specialization is for insects.
-Robert A. Heinlein
Blog: http://iacobus.blogspot.com