I'm looking for a straightforward way to deploy a standalone Ruby-Tk desktop app on MAc OS X. All existing options for deploying desktop Ruby GUI apps on the Mac (e.g. standaloneify.rb) assume that you are using RubyCocoa or MacRuby, and are tightly bound to Xcode/Interface Builder project structure; or, alternatively, that you are wrapping a simple script via Platypus (http://sveinbjorn.org/platypus) that does not involve deploying the entire Ruby runtime. None of the other existing options that I've found--rubyscript2exe, ocra, crate--support the Mac and/or support Ruby 1.9. I'm hoping that someone can point me to a shell script or Ruby script that does the following: * Tracks all dependencies/gems in an app. * Copies the Ruby interpreter and dependencies into an application bundle. * Runs install_name_tool on the Ruby interpreter and all dylibs to make them portable. The application bundle can either be something created by Platypus, use a Cocoa stub launcher, or even a shell script--I know how to handle those. The problem I'm having is getting the Ruby runtime wrapped in a portable way. There's a rakefile at http://weft-qda.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/weft-qda/r... that encompasses the tasks that I'm looking to achieve, but this rakefile is part of a larger build structure that I can't get running on my Mac. I'm not familiar enough with rakefile structure to refactor this into a simple script that I can run, either via "ruby rake_osx.rb" or even "rake". If someone can suggest to me how to modify this rakefile to run independently, or point me to another example project, or even share some code, I would be grateful. The project I am working on is better suited for Ruby than Python (better library support in Ruby), but I am not going to invest time in it if deployment won't work. (Python has a much richer tradition of deployment tools than Ruby, something I've never quite understood.) Thank you, Kevin
on 2012-06-17 23:44

on 2012-06-18 16:43

On 6/17/12 5:41 PM, Kevin Walzer wrote: > If someone can suggest to me how to modify this rakefile to run > independently, or point me to another example project, or even share > some code, I would be grateful. The project I am working on is better > suited for Ruby than Python (better library support in Ruby), but I am > not going to invest time in it if deployment won't work. (Python has a > much richer tradition of deployment tools than Ruby, something I've > never quite understood.) > > Thank you, > Kevin Alas, I think what I am looking for does not exist.
on 2012-06-21 01:20
I hope to build one for OS X sometime in the near future, perhaps we can collaborate? -roger-
on 2012-06-22 04:33
I would be interested. I'm pretty much a newbie with Ruby but have a lot of experience in deploying OS X apps with other languages, including Tcl/Tk and Python; I've use py2app extensively and have done some hacking on cx_freeze (another Python deployment system), and I have a few ideas on what a Ruby system might look like.
on 2012-06-22 14:38
Sure maybe let's take it offline (not fighting words by any stretch of the imagination): rogerdpack@gmail.com
on 2013-11-09 03:39
Hmmm, I too need to deploy a ruby/Tk app on MacOS. I used the Ocra gem successfully to deploy on Windows and was really impressed how that gem abstracted away a lot of messy issues I did not want to micro-manage! Now need to row this Tk app into a MacOS application...