From: James Britt <jamesUNDERBARb@...>
Date: 2004-08-11T10:34:33+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby and Mono

Hal Fulton wrote:
> Here I'm using Mono and .NET interchangeably -- if there's a
> good reason not to, let me know.

I think for most things that's  OK, though the full .Net platform has 
things not in Mono.
> 
> There's been talk about an IronRuby (though I wouldn't want to
> call it that) to match the IronPython that recently came into
> being.
> 
> However, I'm not sure exactly what this should consist of:
> 
> 1. A Ruby interpreter ported to Mono? 
> 2. A native (x86/whatever) interpreter that spits out CIL bytecodes?
> 3. A combo of these? An interpreter ported to Mono that outputs Mono?
> 4. A library that simply allows calling the CLR and such?
> 5. Or something else entirely?
> 
> 4 seems weak.
> 1 does also.
> 2 (essentially cross-compiling) seems inconsistent.
> 3 tentatively seems best to me.
> 5 -- who knows?

I think the main goal should be a ruby-to-CLR compiler, such that one 
could write code in Ruby and run it under mono/.net, and have it call 
other CLR objects (such as those written in IronPython).  Ruby compiled 
to CLR should also be callable by other CLR languages (e.g., C#).

And yeah, "IronRuby" is a less than ideal name.

Anyone know where that 'Iron' part came from?

James