From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2009-03-02T05:19:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Priorities for JRuby 1.3

Ken Bloom wrote:
> I use Debian, who included 1.8.7 in their recent stable release, so most 
> of my code is being targeted to 1.8.7 these days. While I understand (and 
> agree with) philosophically the argument against making 1.8.7 to begin 
> with, once it's out and once it's the default on my platform, then that's 
> what I'm targeting.
> 
> If you're doing 1.9 libraries anyway, then I imagine it's relatively easy 
> to create a 1.8.7 compatibility mode by shaking up the list of what 
> methods are included in what classes under what circumstances. Right? If 
> so, then do it. (I imagine it wouldn't kill the 1.8.6 compatibility mode, 
> right?)
> 
> If it's really hard, and I'm the only voice talking, then maybe it's not 

Well, here's the deal. You're right that a lot of the work *may* already 
be there, and maybe just needs to be rewired. The biggest thing that 
keeps me personally from wanting to support 1.8.7 is a lack of RubySpecs 
for the new and modified features. Anyone interested in 1.8.7 support in 
JRuby should register their vote by contributing 1.8.7 feature specs.

> * "Compiler #2" to produce normal Java classes from Ruby
> 
> This would be really cool. I had been using Groovy for this purpose some 
> time ago, but ran away because it was slow (a problem that has since been 
> mostly solved) and has confusing semantics (a problem that may never be 
> fixed, since GPath seems to be their major selling point)

Yeah, I have a general idea how it will work in my head, and it's always 
been doable. I had to open my big mouth and offer it as a 1.3 
feature...just about everyone has asked for it now.

> * Improvements to AOT compilation (all-at-once, eliminate runtime codegen)
> 
> I'm not sure what you have in mind here.

Currently when you AOT compile Ruby code, there's still some code 
generated at runtime. This means you can't AOT compile to put on a 
mobile device or in an unsigned applet, and you're force to interpret in 
those cases. This work would make AOT compilation more "complete", doing 
that additional bit of code generation at the same time.

- Charlie