From: gabriele renzi <rff_rff@...>
Date: 2004-10-10T20:24:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby VM Projects

Abe Vionas ha scritto:


> If I understand correctly, what y'all are saying is that a new VM
> is intended to increase the speed of Ruby, yes? Am I understanding
> the motivation behind a different VM? 

I'd say 'not only'. As an example, YARV would allow compilation of ruby 
to c code so that people could get slightly obfuscated libraries, a 
thing that is often asked. Or they could provide native OS threading.
But in general I guess is mostly a matter of performance :)

> I read some stuff about
> broader API access (Perl, Java, etc) but correct me if I'm wrong
> but doesn't C/C++ have just about everything anyone could ever ask
> for? What would API access to additional languages add that
> couldn't be created in the same way people have been coding for
> Ruby to use C in the background. I'm a newb obviously, so I could
> be completely f'ing this up... in other words I might have
> completely misunderstood the issues, but I'd like to know one way
> or another....

Well, each different project has different aims.
Say, the Cardinal guys are writing a ruby2parrot compiler because it 
will allow you to use every perl module out there and there are /lots/ 
(not only this reason but even this).
JRuby allows you to use ruby in places where you could not use C 
libraries (i.e. I'm not aware of any C/C++ application server :)

there are just a bunch of different reasons :)