# Rice 1.3.0 - Now with full 1.9 support! **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [December 14, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rice-1-3-0-now-with-full-1-9-support/180207 "2009-12-14T19:29:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2009, 7:29pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rice-1-3-0-now-with-full-1-9-support/180207/1 "2009-12-14T19:29:30Z")
# Rice: Ruby Interface for C++ Extensions What is Rice? Rice is a C++ interface to Ruby’s C API. It provides a type-safe and exception-safe interface in order to make embedding Ruby and writing Ruby extensions with C++ easier. It is similar to Boost.Python in many ways, but also attempts to provide an object-oriented interface to all of the Ruby C API. What’s New? - Full 1.9 support! - Cleaned up Rice::Director to be easier to use and support inheritance nicely (see Documentation) - Multiple Rice extensions pulled into the same Ruby instance now work properly Supported Platforms: - Linux - Mac OS X 10.5 and 10.6 - Windows with MinGW / MSYS What Rice gives you: - A simple C+±based syntax for wrapping and defining classes - Automatic conversion of exceptions between C++ and Ruby - Smart pointers for handling garbage collection - Wrappers for most builtin types to simplify calling code Documentation: [http://rice.rubyforge.org](http://rice.rubyforge.org) Project Page: [GitHub - jameskilton/rice: Account name changed!](http://github.com/jameskilton/rice) Google G.: [http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-rice](http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-rice) How do you get Rice? gem install rice Note: Rice does require a C++ compiler. See the Documentation page for more details. How simple of a syntax? wrapper.cpp #include \ #include \ class MyWrapper { public: MyWrapper() { } ``` void doThis() { } int doThat(int a, float b) { } ``` }; extern “C” void Init\_wrapper() { define\_class(“MyWrapper”) .define\_constructor(Constructor()) .define\_method(“do\_this”, &MyWrapper::doThis) .define\_method(“do\_that”, &MyWrapper::doThat); } extconf.rb require ‘mkmf-rice’ create\_makefile(“wrapper”) test.rb require ‘wrapper’ c = MyWrapper.new c.do\_this c.do\_that(1, 2.0) ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2009, 9:48pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rice-1-3-0-now-with-full-1-9-support/180207/2 "2009-12-14T21:48:48Z")
Great news! =) (I’m the one who was bugging you about using RB++/Rice for wrapping GSL, remember?) Just a question, how does rice/rb++ handle memory in the GC? I mean, does it have a one-to-one mapping between wrapped C pointers and objects? Or will it create a new wrapped object (i.e: different object\_id) every time a to\_ruby conversion from a wrapped C++ class is performed? I’m asking this since for my project (not the one with GSL, a 3D+physics simulator which is currently wrapped to ruby with SWIG) it may be an issue if on every timeframe objects are created and destroyed. Matt ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2009, 10:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rice-1-3-0-now-with-full-1-9-support/180207/3 "2009-12-14T22:56:08Z")
On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 3:49 PM, Matt B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > simulator which is currently wrapped to ruby with SWIG) it may be an > issue if on every timeframe objects are created and destroyed. > > ## Matt > > Posted via [http://www.ruby-forum.com/](http://www.ruby-forum.com/). AFAIK Rice does a pretty good job of managing object pointers and not causing an excessive amount of memory thrashing by creating / destroying C++ and Ruby objects, but I’ve never run any real memory tests against it. I do know that with my project of wrapping Ogre 3D I have to GC.disable or I get crashes where memory gets freed before it should (related more to my wrapping code than Rice itself, I do believe), so there’s plenty of work to do with this before it’s rock solid both itself and how people are to use it. One thing Rice doesn’t have that I have been asked about is SWIG’s %trackobject directive: [SWIG and Ruby](http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Ruby.html#Ruby_nn60). My plan right now is to let the current features get beat on, and for now spend time on memory management and some work underneath the covers. If you find some reproducible memory problems do please create an Issue for it, or a discussion on the ruby-rice mailing list. Jason ---
**Author:** ![jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/d2c977/32.png) [@jruyle](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/jruyle)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2009, 11:02pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rice-1-3-0-now-with-full-1-9-support/180207/4 "2009-12-14T23:02:50Z")
> One thing Rice doesn’t have that I have been asked about is SWIG’s > %trackobject directive: [SWIG and Ruby](http://www.swig.org/Doc1.3/Ruby.html#Ruby_nn60). > My > plan right now is to let the current features get beat on, and for now > spend > time on memory management and some work underneath the covers. If you > find > some reproducible memory problems do please create an Issue for it, or a > discussion on the ruby-rice mailing list. Exactly, in my code I use %trackobjects to do gc\_mark on instances of wrapped objects. Therefore it is all working with GC enabled. In any case, I agree that Rice should settle now, before adding any more complicated stuff =) It was just out curiosity that I asked. Matt