From: Mark Hubbart <discord@...>
Date: 2004-03-05T06:42:14+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby 1.8.1 on OS X Panther and RubyCocoa


On Mar 4, 2004, at 12:49 PM, Phil Tomson wrote:

> Being new to OS X (about 2 weeks now).
>
> What's the best way to upgrade from the included Ruby (1.6.8) to
> 1.8.1?

I tried a few different ways; for me the best way was to configure ruby 
to install into /usr/local. This lets me keep the system version of 
ruby around, and makes it so that I don't have to reinstall the newer 
version of ruby when I upgrade the OS.

> 1. I want to use RubyCocoa; are there any issues if I upgrade to
> 1.8.1?

(Disclaimer! I didn't work with it a whole lot, but did read the docs.)
IIRC: applications built with Ruby v1.8 may not run properly on systems 
running Ruby v1.6.

> 2. In the future it would be cool to be able to release my RubyCocoa
> creations into the OS X wild (even to non-Ruby users).  Is there any
> way currently to package a RubyCocoa app so that anyone who downloads
> it can just run it without having to go and get the RubyCocoa libs?

There are two types of applications that you can make with RubyCocoa. 
One is a standard ruby script that includes the extensions that link to 
the framework. The other is a bundled app that you produce using 
Apple's XCode. If you go with the bundled app, the framework can be 
bundled up inside the app and noone will need to know that you even 
used Ruby in the app :) If you distribute a script, OTOH, you will need 
to provide the framework and compiled extensions.

> I guess it would be nice if Apple included RubyCocoa libs with their
> next release of OS X, that would make #2 easy.  It seems like there
> are a couple of ways to achieve this:
> 1) We include RubyCocoa in the standard Ruby release (of course it
> wouldn't get compiled on Windows platforms, but it could potentially
> work with GNUStep on Linux) as another GUI lib (like we include FOX
> and TK support now).
> 2) We lobby Apple to include RubyCocoa in OS X 10.4

Personally, I really, REALLY think that Apple should maintain it. I 
think all the bridge projects are open-sourced, so they could make 
their own version of it. If they made RubyCocoa and it's sisters 
(CamelBones and PyObjC) as easy to use as the Java-ObjectiveC Bridge, I 
think there would be a lot more mac developers :) Seeing how many apps 
there are now that were written using the java bridge, I'm sure that a 
really good interface to the major "scripting" languages would result 
in tons of new or ported apps. I know I would be developing more.

Unfortunately, Apple isn't maintaining them, and RubyCocoa, which was 
written by a very busy person, hasn't had any major updates in a while 
(that I know of) and last time I tried to install it (on panther) i 
found it to be too much trouble. If I knew ObjectiveC, I would try to 
help the project; but I don't.

> It's great to have Ruby included on OS X, but it would be even better
> if we could write Cocoa apps with it right out of the box.  Is anyone
> at Apple listening?

I hope so... :)

--Mark

>
> Phil
>