# MacRuby for simple Ruby

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/macruby-for-simple-ruby/184291>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [February 28, 2010, 11:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/macruby-for-simple-ruby/184291 "2010-02-28T11:08:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ac91a4/32.png) [@Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean_Guillaume_Pyra)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2010, 11:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/macruby-for-simple-ruby/184291/1 "2010-02-28T11:08:03Z")

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Hi,  
If I download MacRuby, will I be able to program “usual” Ruby  
(without Cocoa and the Objective-C bridge), with gems, etc.  
or am I obliged to program a Caoca Mac application ?  
Is there an IDE inside, or just XCode ?  
Thanks a lot,

JG

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**Author:** ![Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ac91a4/32.png) [@Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean_Guillaume_Pyra)\
**Post date:** [February 28, 2010, 5:16pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/macruby-for-simple-ruby/184291/2 "2010-02-28T17:16:33Z")

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Jean Guillaume Pyraksos wrote:

> If I download MacRuby, will I be able to program “usual” Ruby  
> (without Cocoa and the Objective-C bridge), with gems, etc.  
> or am I obliged to program a Caoca Mac application ?  
> Is there an IDE inside, or just XCode ?

The stated goal of MacRuby is to be 100% compatible syntactically and  
behaviorally with Ruby 1.9. So, in theory, you should be able to write  
usual Ruby code.

I don’t know that all the gems are compatible though. You might ask  
their list about particular gems…

[http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel](http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel)

There is no other IDE from Apple except Xcode that would be used for  
Ruby.

Jose  
…  
Jose Hales-Garcia  
UCLA Department of Statistics  
removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/ac91a4/32.png) [@Jean\_Guillaume\_Pyra](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Jean_Guillaume_Pyra)\
**Post date:** [March 1, 2010, 9:24am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/macruby-for-simple-ruby/184291/3 "2010-03-01T09:24:49Z")

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Jean Guillaume Pyraksos wrote:

> Hi,  
> If I download MacRuby, will I be able to program “usual” Ruby  
> (without Cocoa and the Objective-C bridge), with gems, etc.  
> or am I obliged to program a Caoca Mac application ?  
> Is there an IDE inside, or just XCode ?  
> Thanks a lot,
> 
> JG

MacRuby can’t compile native extensions yet, and fork() is not  
implemented and there are no plans to implement it either(Due to the  
CoreFoundation framework, and maybe other reasons) … So there are some  
gems that will never ever work with MacRuby.

MacRuby is good for casual programming right now but until it gets a  
little bit older I wouldn’t consider it for developing production  
applications. It is still a fun language for hacking around on, though.

– Rob