From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2008-11-19T15:28:47+09:00
Subject: Re: Ever heared of XRuby before?

Xie Hanjian wrote:
> XRuby was started by yawl and continued by dreamhead at about the same
> time JRuby created, but JRuby had only an interpreter then (I think) when XRuby released its ruby to java bytecode compiler.

This is basically true. JRuby's compiler was not actually completed and 
released until 2008, though some experimentation had happened earlier. I 
spoke with XRuby guys frequently in 2006 and 2007, and we generally 
agreed that while XRuby had already a much better compiler, JRuby's 
runtime and core classes were further along. As a result of JRuby's core 
classes being more "correct", we were able to run Rails in 2006, which 
is largely why Sun and Thoughtworks became so interested in JRuby during 
late 2006 and early 2007.

I still believe XRuby has something valuable the community could really 
use: perhaps the closest-to-correct Antlr grammar for Ruby yet created. 
I'd love for others to take it over and bring it to completion.

- Charlie