From: Logan Capaldo <logancapaldo@...>
Date: 2006-06-18T02:10:17+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Ruby2CExtension 0.1.0


On Jun 17, 2006, at 10:31 AM, Dominik Bathon wrote:

> Ruby2CExtension is a Ruby to C extension translator/compiler. It  
> takes any
> Ruby source file, parses it using Ruby's builtin parser and then  
> translates
> the abstract syntax tree into "equivalent" C extension code.
>
> More information and download at http://ruby2cext.rubyforge.org/.
>
>
> Example
> -------
>
> Let's say you have a Ruby file foo.rb. To translate it to a C  
> extension and
> then compile it, just run:
>
>   rb2cx foo.rb
>
> This will produce the files foo.c and foo.so (on Linux). foo.c is the
> generated C extension source code and foo.so is the compiled C  
> extension.
>
>
> Why?
> ----
>
> Well, like everybody else I wanted a faster Ruby and I also wanted  
> to learn
> about Ruby's internals, so I thought translating Ruby to C might be  
> worth a
> try...
>
> The results are not as good as I had hoped, but they aren't bad  
> either: the
> generated C extension is practically never slower than the Ruby  
> code and I
> found cases where it is more than twice as fast, usually it is  
> somewhere in
> between.
>
> Of course Ruby2CExtension can also be used as an obfuscator for  
> Ruby code,
> though this was not my main motivation.
>
>
> Features
> --------
>
> Ruby2CExtension supports a very large subset of Ruby's features (it  
> can
> translate itself into a C extension and the compiled version works  
> correctly):
>
> * all the basics (classes, methods, ...)
> * blocks, closures
> * instance_eval, define_method, ... (only when the block is given  
> directly)
> * correct constant and class variable lookup
> * raise, rescue, retry, ensure
> * ...
>
> Of course there are some limitations, please see
>
> http://ruby2cext.rubyforge.org/limitations.html
>
>
> Requirements
> ------------
>
> * Ruby 1.8.4
> * RubyNode (http://rubynode.rubyforge.org/)
>

Duplication of effort? Do you know about ParseTree and Ruby2C?