Macruby - some basic questions

Ruby
1

I am going thru the macruby site and tutorial.

  1. I’d like to know if macruby is essentially meant for developing GUI
    applications on OS X ?

  2. Is there some list of example applications developed with macruby ?
    I’d like to see what’s been developed with macruby before i decide if
    its interesting enough for me to get into.

  3. What is the essential advantage of macruby over ruby 1.9 ?
    Is it access to OS X core data/audio etc services and features?

thanks, rk.

2

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:56 AM, R… Kumar 1.9.1 OSX
[email protected] wrote:

Is it access to OS X core data/audio etc services and features?
While I can’t answer any of your questions specifically, you might be
interested in the MacRuby list at
http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel.

3

On 17 Aug 2010, at 17:56, R… Kumar 1.9.1 OSX wrote:

I am going thru the macruby site and tutorial.

  1. I’d like to know if macruby is essentially meant for developing GUI
    applications on OS X ?

It provides a toll free bridge between ruby and the objective-c world of
Cocoa and the other Apple frameworks. Macruby can be used for anything
you want to use these frameworks for, but the obvious (and probably most
popular) use will be for GUI development.

  1. Is there some list of example applications developed with macruby ?
    I’d like to see what’s been developed with macruby before i decide if
    its interesting enough for me to get into.

I don’t recall seeing a list, but it was only at the last version (0.6)
it was deemed stable enough for proper development so I don’t think
there are many apps out there yet. There is a growing set of samples.

  1. What is the essential advantage of macruby over ruby 1.9 ?
    Is it access to OS X core data/audio etc services and features?

Undoubtedly access to the OS X core frameworks. It uses LLVM for its
JIT and has ahead of time compilation (good for startup speed and
keeping your code private). Not much effort has gone into performance
tuning yet but given the effort going into LLVM and the low level system
support (garbage collection, method dispatch and multicore support) I
expect it will eventually be faster than standard 1.9.

Dave.

4

Eric C. wrote:

On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 11:56 AM, R… Kumar 1.9.1 OSX
[email protected] wrote:

Is it access to OS X core data/audio etc services and features?
While I can’t answer any of your questions specifically, you might be
interested in the MacRuby list at
http://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/macruby-devel.

Thanks for the answers.

I was avoiding joining the list, till I knew what it was all about and
whether it was interesting for me or not. A lot of the information
assumes you already know all the Mac terms. I’ve been on a Mac for 6
years, but essentially been using GNU screen and vim and ruby. So no
idea of cocoa, Obj-c, ruby cocoa, hotcocoa, frameworks, etc.

So i’ve understood that it’s essentially for GUI development on OS X.

Cheers and thanks.