From: Brett Williams <brett_williams@...>
Date: 2001-12-06T01:24:41+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:27560] Re: Ruby SWIG alive?

The reason the Ruby SWIG homepage version is not actively maintained is 
that it has been incorporated as part of the SWIG distribution now.  
Maintenance and improvements would now be done as part of the SWIG project.

Despite this, Ruby SWIG is not being actively maintained there either :(.  
We use it regularly despite this, and have a couple of fixes to it.  
They've been submitted to SWIG's Sourceforge site but I don't think 
anything is being done (even really simple fixes aren't included).

Ruby works great through SWIG.  We wrap our C++ code into 3 languages 
(Ruby, Perl, and Tcl) and the Ruby version is much easier to support and 
use.

Despite it not being maintained, there are some important projects that 
depend on it.   FXRuby, for example, uses SWIG to wrap the FOX GUI (correct 
me on any of this if I'm wrong, Lyle).

The author of SWIG, David Beazley, could probably use some help with the 
Ruby module.  He made a request a month or two ago looking for help with it 
(the Ruby module currently is lagging behind the others and needs some 
work).  I've considered offering help myself but I'm not sure I'm quite 
qualified to do so beyond simple changes, and it needs more work than 
simple changes based on what David had said in that request for help.

AFAIK, no one has offered their services as help.... if they have, maybe 
they'll see this and correct me :)

MikkelFJ wrote:

> I justed tried to use Ruby SWIG.
> It was easy enough, but the code generated is not ANSI C and it doesn't
> compile on Windows (MSVC 6.0).
> This is mainly due to the use of ALLOCA_N, and some missing typecasts.
> ALLOCA_N is defined as alloca.
> 
> When I check the buglist on source forge, there is no Ruby entry but there
> are a few bugs on Ruby that doesn't seem to be maintained.
> When I look at the Ruby SWIG homepage via RAA it states that the version
> at the site is not maintained.
> Does this mean that Ruby SWIG is not maintained?
> 
> That would be a pitty, because I was just so pleased about how well it
> seemed to work.
> 
> MikkelFJ