From: Alex Fenton <alex@...>
Date: 2009-03-03T06:53:53+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] wxRuby 2.0.0

James Britt wrote:
> Alex Fenton wrote:
>> http://wxruby.rubyforge.org/
> 
> Very cool.

Thanks.

> I looked around the the project site, but did not find any specif info 
> on packaging of completed apps for distribution.
> 
> How do I bundle up a wxRuby app to give to an end user (who may or may 
> not have Ruby installed)?

Rubyscript2exe works fine for many cases. On Windows and OS X, wxWidgets 
is statically compiled into wxRuby, so you have everything you need to 
redistribute to others.

For more advanced installations, I've used platform-specific tools like 
Platypus (OS X) and NSIS installer (Windows) to ship a complete ruby 
package that works like a compiled native app.

> Can I do all my development on my Ubuntu machine, then bundle up my app 
> and hand it off to a Mac or Windows user?

As with any other MRI native extension, a compiled wxRuby library is 
specific to platform (= OS + processor + major ruby version). The ruby 
code works independently, but you can't build a rubyscript2exe on Linux 
for Windows.

But given that the way desktop apps are expected to work varies 
considerably by OS, you're going to want to test on Mac before you hand 
it off from Ubuntu, aren't you?

alex