From: "Jörg W Mittag" <JoergWMittag+Usenet@...>
Date: 2009-04-01T20:04:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Move over, Phusion, here comes the *real* Enterprise Edition!

James Britt wrote:
> J�rg W Mittag wrote:
>> BTW: If I counted correctly, we can soon celebrate the 30th Ruby
>> Implementation!
> What defines an implementation?  70% or more of RubySpec?

Sorry, that was some unfortunate wording on my part. Well, more than
unfortunate, just plain stupid, considering that just a few hours
before that, I argued that calling MacRuby "the fastest Ruby
Implementation" was wrong, because unless it passes the RubySpec
suite, it ain't a *Ruby* Implementation.

So, that's 27 (I think, in the last few months I've lost count a
little bit) projects that in some way, shape or form have once had the
goal of implementing at least a sizeable subset of Ruby, and which
have actually produced some code, design documents or similar
artifacts.

But only 3 of those (MRI, YARV and JRuby) actually fully implement
Ruby. (And actually, JRuby does not implement continuations, so
technically it's not a full Ruby Implementation either.)

> All these Ruby VM projects are great, but if I can't run arbitrary Ruby 
> code with high expectations of success, then "implementation" may not be 
> the right word.

I agree. That's why I am quite positively surprised, that the Blue
Ruby project actually *runs* the RubySpec suite and publishes the
numbers. Given that Blue Ruby is a proprietary corporate project that
has been developed behind closed doors without any interaction with
the larger Ruby and Ruby implementers community, I'm quite pleased
with the emphasis on being a first class Ruby citizen, and generally
doing the right thing wrt. the "Rubyness" of the implementation.

Running the RubySpecs is unfortunately *not* something that is the
norm for Ruby Implementations. Some noteable implementations that do
(or at least did, last time I checked) *not* run the RubySpecs include
MRI and YARV, for example. Anybody remember MRI 1.8.7?

jwm