RubyCocoa 0.11.0

Hi,

I am honored to announce the immediate release of RubyCocoa 0.11.0.

RubyCocoa is a Mac OS X framework that allows Cocoa programming in the
object-oriented scripting language Ruby. In other words, it is a
bridge that let you access Objective-C objects from Ruby, and
vice-versa.

You can learn more about RubyCocoa on our new website (which is
actually a Wiki):

http://rubycocoa.sf.net

This is one of the biggest releases we ever made, thanks to all
contributors. All RubyCocoa users are encouraged to upgrade.

Following are the release notes. Enjoy!

The RubyCocoa Team

Features:

  • Now shipping with RDoc HTML/ri files covering the frameworks
    RubyCocoa supports. The methods and their documentation come from the
    latest reference documentation from Apple (07-05-2007) and have been
    parsed and manipulated to look like the syntax used on the Ruby side
    of RubyCocoa.
  • Better global support for the C bits of frameworks, thanks to the
    new BridgeSupport changes. More exposure of C symbols, support for
    string constants, inline functions, functions with pointer-like
    arguments, function pointer arguments, opaque structures, magic-cookie
    constants, and more. Support for endianness-specific elements. Support
    for QuartzComposer.
  • Introduced ActiveRecord bindings. It means that you can now use
    ActiveRecord in the same way you would use CoreData when writing the
    backend of your application. It also has support for ActiveRecord
    migrations. It comes with some extra OSX support, like creating and
    connecting to a SQLite database in the user’s ~/Library. There’s also
    a NSTableView subclass which has one extra instance method which
    allows you to scaffold the table columns for a given model.
  • Added support for overriding class methods, using
    #objc_class_method. #objc_export has been deprecated and #objc_method
    should be used instead.
  • Added support for aliasing Objective-C methods from ruby, via
    #objc_alias_method and #objc_alias_class_method.
  • Introduced new RBBundle API, to use RubyCocoa in a bundle (like
    SIMBL).
  • Added syntax-sugar APIs to manage property lists. OSA.load_plist, to
    deserialize plist data of any format to a Ruby object.
    #to_plist(format=nil), to convert the given Ruby object to plist data
    of the given format (XML by default).
  • Better interface of basic Objective-C types and their Ruby
    equivalents. NSString responds to all methods String does. Time
    objects are converted to NSDate objects. Added NSObject#to_ruby, which
    converts the given Cocoa type to the Ruby equivalent (converting
    sub-elements for NSArray and NSDictionary).
  • Support for C/Objective-C APIs using format strings. RubyCocoa is
    now able to parse the format string value and appropriately convert
    the variable arguments to the right type.
  • Better ObjcPtr API. #assign, to assign a value to the pointer. #[],
    to retrieve something at a particular index. #[]=, to assign something
    at a particular index. #regard_as, to specify the Objective-C encoding
    of the receiver.
  • New tool: rb_nibtool.rb, to synchronize nib files with RubyCocoa
    source files. Added #ib_action to declare IBAction methods. Not
    necessary unless you want to use the tool.
  • New tool: standalonify.rb, to detect all the Ruby dependencies of
    your application (including gems) and generate a new application with
    everything inside, to make easier its deployment.
  • Added Xcode templates to do Ruby unit testing.
  • RubyCocoa can now build 64-bit and fundamentally work on a 64-bit
    environment. However all tests are not passing yet.
  • New sample code: sample/ViewModelDemo, sample/RubyAnywhere,
    sample/VPRubyPluginEnabler, sample/Fortune.wdgt, sample/CocoaRepl,
    sample/MailDemo/MailDemoActiveRecordBindings.

Bug fixes:

  • Ruby 1.9 compatibility fixes.
  • Now manually decoding the Objective-C runtime types.
  • Better RBObject retention mechanism.
  • Make sure builtin frameworks cannot be required twice.
  • Fixed a memory leak when calling RBApplicationMain more than once.
  • Converted the Xcode templates property lists from the old OpenStep
    format to UTF-8 XML.
  • Fixed the import of NSProxy-based classes.
  • Fixed a bug in the direct override code.
  • Various fixes to make Cocoa printing functional (see the PathDemo
    sample for an example).
  • Make sure everything is compiled with -O3. This is to make sure the
    FFI-generated closures are callable from the generated
    objc_msgSent_stret calls
    by GCC. Otherwise closures return C structure may cause memory
    corruption.
  • Fixed a bug in the OCException class (making sure #userInfo is
    binded to the right instance variable).
  • Deprecated ns_override, ns_outlet.
  • Make sure to return nil when easy dispatching void methods.
  • Fixed a dispatching issue about omitted pointers and CFType-like args.
  • Ported to the 2.0 Objective-C runtime. Compatibility with the
    previous runtime is ensured.
  • Do not access ruby_frame->last_func directly.
  • Make sure to ignore classes that start with a lower character.
    Normally Ruby forbids this but some SWIG-based extensions have such
    class names.
  • Now converting Ruby arrays to C-like arrays for arguments of type
    ‘in’ that represent an array of a variable length.
  • Fixed ObjCID#inspect.
  • Fixed memory leaks in Ruby ↔ ObjC messaging.
  • Allows RubyCocoa to be called by Objective-C from a thread that
    isn’t the main one, by routing the NSInvocation / FFI closure into the
    main thread via the main run loop. Prints a warning before routing.
    This is to avoid a crash since Ruby isn’t thread-safe.
  • Refactored attachments to add methods directly to the Objective-C
    class and not using modules anymore, fixed NSEnumerator#to_a.
  • Fixed direct method override feature for Ruby > 1.8.2 and < 1.8.5.
  • Better backtrace information of exceptions raised from Ruby.
  • When wrapping a returned ocid in a Ruby object, if the wanted class
    name can’t be a constant (because starting with ‘_’ or [a-z]), try to
    use the superclass name when possible.
  • Do not crash if one resource (for example rb_main.rb) isn’t found,
    but propose a clear message to the user instead.
  • Added support for getting C_ARY_B type arguments by reference.
  • Now configure the deployment target based on the
    –macosx-deployment-target parameter passed to install.rb config.
  • Fixed a bug in [-setValue:forUndefinedKey:] to not insert nil values
    in the cache dictionary.
  • Introduced a new config phase variable, ‘build-as-embeddable’,
    turned on by default, which builds RubyCocoa.framework with an
    INSTALL_PATH set to
    @executable_path/…/Frameworks/RubyCocoa.framework/RubyCocoa. When
    turned off, INSTALL_PATH will get an absolute path value (the value of
    the ‘frameworks’ config phase variable).
  • Fixed some bugs when messaging Ruby from Objective-C. Fixed a bug
    when the Ruby proxy cannot be determined, and another when OSX methods
    couldn’t be called directly on an Objective-C class from Ruby
    (DirectOverride).
  • Do not allow pointers arguments that don’t have an ‘out’ type
    modifier to be omitted.
  • Ignore the ‘Nil’ Foundation enumeration.
  • Better behavior for C-array like arguments with a length argument.
    Do not emit a warning anymore if a value is passed for the length
    argument. If the value is either negative or greater than the size of
    the given array, raise an exception. Otherwise, just pass the value.
  • OSX.objc_symbol_to_obj has been obsoleted.
  • Added support to decode structure fields of the union type.
  • Properly handle exceptions NSGetSizeAndAlignment could throw.
  • Increased the method encoding buffer when analyzing its arguments.

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Only today I was thinking of porting my latest piece of Ruby software to
OS
X, and wondering whether something like this existed.

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Hi,

I see on your GettingStarted page this requires OS X 10.4.8, but I’m
still using Panther (10.3.9). Could you tell me which branch in CVS
is the last to run on Panther?

Hi,

On 5/23/07, Erwin A. [email protected] wrote:

Hi,

I see on your GettingStarted page this requires OS X 10.4.8, but I’m
still using Panther (10.3.9). Could you tell me which branch in CVS
is the last to run on Panther?

In fact you may be able to build the source release on Panther, though
I haven’t test this yet. The only requirement would be libxml2 (which
is bundled since Tiger).

Please contact us if you encounter problems.

Laurent

On May 22, 2:35 pm, “Laurent S.”
[email protected] wrote:

I am honored to announce the immediate release of RubyCocoa 0.11.0.

This is great news, and from the looks of it, a great release. Thanks
for your hard work. I look forward to exploring what’s new this
weekend.