# What can Ruby offer? **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [November 24, 2006, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-can-ruby-offer/77160 "2006-11-24T21:24:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Smokey_The_B)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2006, 9:24pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-can-ruby-offer/77160/1 "2006-11-24T21:24:56Z")
I have been looking into the Ruby language for awhile now…reading lots of information on its capabilities and whatnot. I bought the Programming Ruby book as well to look into it some more. What blurs the lines is information on Ruby and Ruby on Rails. I’m just wondering if Ruby has the capability to create PROGRAMS in the sense that say that I want to develop a multimedia program like a music player, Can Ruby build a music player that doesn’t require installations of ruby to be on the existing system? I know pretty much all \*nix systems have ruby installed by default, but I don’t like the sound of developing a music player that acts like a script and requires an existing installation of Ruby on said system. I know it can call and access native APIs on the platforms it’s available on but can such a program be done with Ruby? I’m really into multimedia and I see myself developing multimedia applications. I just don’t understand the capabilities of Ruby and what should this tool be used for? ---
**Author:** ![Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Smokey_The_B)\ **Post date:** [November 24, 2006, 9:30pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-can-ruby-offer/77160/2 "2006-11-24T21:30:57Z")
Smokey The B. wrote: > Can Ruby build a music player that doesn’t require installations > of ruby to be on the existing system? As a script language, Ruby needs the interpreter to be installed. Tha same happens with Perl, PHP and so on. But you can use some tools that transform your ruby script to a standalone executable. ---
**Author:** ![Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Smokey_The_B)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 4:38am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-can-ruby-offer/77160/3 "2006-11-27T04:38:31Z")
On 11/25/06, Smokey The B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > developing a music player that acts like a script and requires an > existing installation of Ruby on said system. > > I know it can call and access native APIs on the platforms it’s > available on but can such a program be done with Ruby? I’m really into > multimedia and I see myself developing multimedia applications. > > I just don’t understand the capabilities of Ruby and what should this > tool be used for? Ruby is an interpreted programming language. That means that it requires a runtime component (the interpreter and the set of standard libraries) at execution time. This it the same for other interpreted languages such as Perl or Python, and not dissimilar for things like Java or C# (they both require a virtual machine to execute). If you want to distribute Ruby programs to users that are unlikely to have a working Ruby installation, have a look at Ruby2Exe, which can package up the runtime and all required libraries. Unless you are writing in C or some other compiled language, you will always need some sort of runtime. And even with compiled languages, more often than not you will need to bundle a certain set of libraries with your application, which - depending on what the application does - can be fairly sizeable as well. As for multimedia applications - depends on what you men by that. If you are talking about a real-time video compositing system or live audio effects, Ruby won’t help you much. If what you want to do is create a music player with a nice shiny UI, and you will rely on existing OS capabilities or third-party libraries for the numerical heavy lifting (mp3 decoding, etc.), then yes, Ruby can do that. Cheers, Max ---
**Author:** ![Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/bc8723/32.png) [@Smokey\_The\_B](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Smokey_The_B)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2006, 5:03am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/what-can-ruby-offer/77160/4 "2006-11-27T05:03:24Z")
Max M. wrote: > On 11/25/06, Smokey The B. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > > > developing a music player that acts like a script and requires an > > existing installation of Ruby on said system. > > > > I know it can call and access native APIs on the platforms it’s > > available on but can such a program be done with Ruby? I’m really into > > multimedia and I see myself developing multimedia applications. > > > > I just don’t understand the capabilities of Ruby and what should this > > tool be used for? > > Ruby is an interpreted programming language. That means that it > requires a runtime component (the interpreter and the set of standard > libraries) at execution time. This it the same for other interpreted > languages such as Perl or Python, and not dissimilar for things like > Java or C# (they both require a virtual machine to execute). > > If you want to distribute Ruby programs to users that are unlikely to > have a working Ruby installation, have a look at Ruby2Exe, which can > package up the runtime and all required libraries. > > Unless you are writing in C or some other compiled language, you will > always need some sort of runtime. And even with compiled languages, > more often than not you will need to bundle a certain set of libraries > with your application, which - depending on what the application does > > - can be fairly sizeable as well. > > As for multimedia applications - depends on what you men by that. If > you are talking about a real-time video compositing system or live > audio effects, Ruby won’t help you much. > > If what you want to do is create a music player with a nice shiny UI, > and you will rely on existing OS capabilities or third-party libraries > for the numerical heavy lifting (mp3 decoding, etc.), then yes, Ruby > can do that. > > Cheers, > Max Even though Ruby is an interpreted language, its packaging capabilities could certainly borrow something from Tcl’s starpacks. Tcl’s starpacks leverage starkits which leverage Tcl’s VFS (see [http://wiki.tcl.tk/2138](http://wiki.tcl.tk/2138)). The VFS support allows for virtualizing the file system calls to more naturally program things that are remote (HTTP or FTP) and local (zip and tar files). Using this functionality, the Tcl community was able to create starkits (originally with zip files and now with metakit ([Metakit embedded database library](http://equi4.com/metakit.html)) files). A Starkit ([Starkit deployment technology](http://equi4.com/starkit.html)) creates the illusion of a “file system in a file” - on the outside, it’s a single file, yet the application code continues to see a complete directory of scripts, extensions, packages, images, and whatever other files it needs. Starkits can be multi-platform. After the success of starkits, they were able to wrap up everything into a single executable that they call starpacks ([Starpack](http://wiki.tcl.tk/3663)). This allows for the delivery of an application as a single file that, for the most part, does not need to be unpacked to temporary locations because the Tcl core has VFS that allows it to look introspectively into the executable. I am not bashing Ruby. I love the clarity of the language and wish that packaging could be made as simple. RubyScript2exe is a good start; however, it would be great if a more robust solution were available to allow for clean packaging of Ruby applications. Thanks, Oleg