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Show your support for Rubinius!

Sam Smoot

12/7/2006 3:07:00 PM

(I hope you don't mind a bit of cross-posting, but seeing as how the
news hasn't seemed to made it here yet...)

Just thought you guys might like the opportunity to show your support.
Even if you haven't heard of Rubinius, or even think it all that
worthy, Evan's done some pretty impressive stuff with Ruby (Sydney for
one), and been pretty generous with his contributions to the community.

Geoffrey Grosenbach (of NubyOnRails and PeepCode fame) has put up $1000
towards Rubinius development. You can read more about it at
NubyOnRails:

http://nubyonrails.topfunky.com/articles/2006/12/06/peepcode-screencasts-places-a-1-000-bet-o...

I love this whole "call to arms" community thing in Ruby. Maybe we
could try and break the record set by the Rails Documentation
fund-raiser. :-)

Thanks, -Sam
15 Answers

Tim Pease

12/7/2006 3:46:00 PM

0

On 12/7/06, Sam Smoot <ssmoot@gmail.com> wrote:
> (I hope you don't mind a bit of cross-posting, but seeing as how the
> news hasn't seemed to made it here yet...)
>
> Just thought you guys might like the opportunity to show your support.
> Even if you haven't heard of Rubinius, or even think it all that
> worthy, Evan's done some pretty impressive stuff with Ruby (Sydney for
> one), and been pretty generous with his contributions to the community.
>
> Geoffrey Grosenbach (of NubyOnRails and PeepCode fame) has put up $1000
> towards Rubinius development. You can read more about it at
> NubyOnRails:
>
> http://nubyonrails.topfunky.com/articles/2006/12/06/peepcode-screencasts-places-a-1-000-bet-o...
>
> I love this whole "call to arms" community thing in Ruby. Maybe we
> could try and break the record set by the Rails Documentation
> fund-raiser. :-)
>

I've been wanting to ask this question for a while now, so here goes.
Is the Rubinius C API compatible with the Ruby 1.8.5 C API? I'm just
wondering if things like RMagick will work with Rubinius (not to
mention my own library wrappers).

Blessings,
TwP

Brian Mitchell

12/7/2006 4:23:00 PM

0

On 12/7/06, Tim Pease <tim.pease@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/7/06, Sam Smoot <ssmoot@gmail.com> wrote:
> > (I hope you don't mind a bit of cross-posting, but seeing as how the
> > news hasn't seemed to made it here yet...)
> >
> > Just thought you guys might like the opportunity to show your support.
> > Even if you haven't heard of Rubinius, or even think it all that
> > worthy, Evan's done some pretty impressive stuff with Ruby (Sydney for
> > one), and been pretty generous with his contributions to the community.
> >
> > Geoffrey Grosenbach (of NubyOnRails and PeepCode fame) has put up $1000
> > towards Rubinius development. You can read more about it at
> > NubyOnRails:
> >
> > http://nubyonrails.topfunky.com/articles/2006/12/06/peepcode-screencasts-places-a-1-000-bet-o...
> >
> > I love this whole "call to arms" community thing in Ruby. Maybe we
> > could try and break the record set by the Rails Documentation
> > fund-raiser. :-)
> >
>
> I've been wanting to ask this question for a while now, so here goes.
> Is the Rubinius C API compatible with the Ruby 1.8.5 C API? I'm just
> wondering if things like RMagick will work with Rubinius (not to
> mention my own library wrappers).

This brings up a really good point. Maybe this is when we should start
considering the use of generic wrappers line RubyInline more
seriously. If RubyInline implemented Rubinius support then we would
have the beginnings of a portable C API because of the automatic
wrapping it does. Just a thought. Of course, I would also like to see
an official revamp of the dl library as well.

Brian.

Wilson Bilkovich

12/7/2006 4:30:00 PM

0

On 12/7/06, Brian Mitchell <binary42@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 12/7/06, Tim Pease <tim.pease@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 12/7/06, Sam Smoot <ssmoot@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > (I hope you don't mind a bit of cross-posting, but seeing as how the
> > > news hasn't seemed to made it here yet...)
> > >
> > > Just thought you guys might like the opportunity to show your support.
> > > Even if you haven't heard of Rubinius, or even think it all that
> > > worthy, Evan's done some pretty impressive stuff with Ruby (Sydney for
> > > one), and been pretty generous with his contributions to the community.
> > >
> > > Geoffrey Grosenbach (of NubyOnRails and PeepCode fame) has put up $1000
> > > towards Rubinius development. You can read more about it at
> > > NubyOnRails:
> > >
> > > http://nubyonrails.topfunky.com/articles/2006/12/06/peepcode-screencasts-places-a-1-000-bet-o...
> > >
> > > I love this whole "call to arms" community thing in Ruby. Maybe we
> > > could try and break the record set by the Rails Documentation
> > > fund-raiser. :-)
> > >
> >
> > I've been wanting to ask this question for a while now, so here goes.
> > Is the Rubinius C API compatible with the Ruby 1.8.5 C API? I'm just
> > wondering if things like RMagick will work with Rubinius (not to
> > mention my own library wrappers).
>
> This brings up a really good point. Maybe this is when we should start
> considering the use of generic wrappers line RubyInline more
> seriously. If RubyInline implemented Rubinius support then we would
> have the beginnings of a portable C API because of the automatic
> wrapping it does. Just a thought. Of course, I would also like to see
> an official revamp of the dl library as well.
>

Rubinius currently makes some use of RubyInline, but that's likely to
be temporary. Currently, we're thinking of using C/Invoke:
http://www.nongnu.or...
..because it provides a very nice way of interfacing with external code.

Rubinius won't have the same 'ruby.h', so it will take some work to
make extensions 'just work'. Knowing Evan, he's probably already
thought of a better solution, though.

Fun milestone: As of last night, Rubinius can run its own compiler.
Ryan Davis's miniunit test/unit replacement works now as well, so
Rubinius should be hosting its own tests in the next week or so.

benjohn

12/7/2006 4:43:00 PM

0

I'd like to know more about Rubinius, but all the info I've got on it
are Evan's blogs on http://blog.fallin.... Is there more info
somewhere else?

Cheers,
Benjohn

Wilson Bilkovich

12/7/2006 4:54:00 PM

0

On 12/7/06, benjohn@fysh.org <benjohn@fysh.org> wrote:
> I'd like to know more about Rubinius, but all the info I've got on it
> are Evan's blogs on http://blog.fallin.... Is there more info
> somewhere else?
>

#rubinius on irc.freenode.net is a good resource.

I'm going to write up an "installing and understanding Rubinius"
document, and Evan is working on some cool architectural diagrams that
we can then put on extremely geeky T-shirts.

Current dependencies (this list will be getting shorter month by month)
ruby:
an existing install of 1.8
sydparse
RubyInline
emp
rake

external:
glib2
gcc 4.0 or 4.1

Right now the Makefile that bootstraps Rubinius isn't set up for other
compilers. You will need to modify it if you have something other than
gcc4.x. This is another temporary issue. If someone wants to come
along and fix it, that would be cool. :)

As soon as the glib2 dependency is gone (soon, hopefully), I will make
sure that Rubinius builds on Windows under VC8.

After you have the dependencies installed:
rake shotgun # builds the C components
rake bk # builds the kernel
rake test_shotgun # runs the unit tests that are in 'shotgun-tests'

Currently there are some test failures, but not too many. The bytecode
is compiled and stored in the 'code-cache' directory as .rbc files.

Edwin Fine

12/8/2006 5:38:00 AM

0

AFAIK, Ruby does not have a formal language specification. The language
is pretty much defined by the Ruby C code (a Bison parser created from
parse.y). This makes it difficult to have a high degree of confidence
that any other implementations will match the original Ruby's behavior
precisely. This is a problem that the JRuby developers highlighted in a
recent interview
(http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/07/interviewing_the_jruby_de...).

From the interview:
-----
"I would really like to see multiple implementations of Ruby the
language end up generating a consistent definition of Ruby that is not
determined by someone changing a line of C code. I give great credit to
the C Ruby developers in designing a great language, but the lack of a
formal language specification will eventually become a liability. The
more implementations hopefully will highlight the need for a formal
language specification."
-----

Maybe things have changed since then; if so, I haven't seen anything
about it. I think that one really major contribution that the Rubinius
project could make (besides another interpreter) would be to create an
initial formal language specification. Of course, it is a complex,
horrible, thankless, and time-consuming job to do this for anything but
a toy language, so I don't foresee a plethora of volunteers :)

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

benjohn

12/10/2006 2:39:00 PM

0


On 7 Dec 2006, at 16:53, Wilson Bilkovich wrote:

> On 12/7/06, benjohn@fysh.org <benjohn@fysh.org> wrote:
>> I'd like to know more about Rubinius, but all the info I've got on it
>> are Evan's blogs on http://blog.fallin.... Is there more info
>> somewhere else?
>>
>
> #rubinius on irc.freenode.net is a good resource.
>
> I'm going to write up an "installing and understanding Rubinius"
> document, and Evan is working on some cool architectural diagrams that
> we can then put on extremely geeky T-shirts.
>
> Current dependencies (this list will be getting shorter month by
> month)
> ruby:
> an existing install of 1.8
> sydparse
> RubyInline
> emp
> rake
>
> external:
> glib2
> gcc 4.0 or 4.1
>
> Right now the Makefile that bootstraps Rubinius isn't set up for other
> compilers. You will need to modify it if you have something other than
> gcc4.x. This is another temporary issue. If someone wants to come
> along and fix it, that would be cool. :)
>
> As soon as the glib2 dependency is gone (soon, hopefully), I will make
> sure that Rubinius builds on Windows under VC8.
>
> After you have the dependencies installed:
> rake shotgun # builds the C components
> rake bk # builds the kernel
> rake test_shotgun # runs the unit tests that are in 'shotgun-tests'
>
> Currently there are some test failures, but not too many. The bytecode
> is compiled and stored in the 'code-cache' directory as .rbc files.

Am I right that Rubinius:

1) Compiles Ruby directly to assembly language, and
2) Is actually written in Ruby, so can self host?

Because that would be cool :) Although, for 1, doesn't it need a lot
of work to target other processors, unless you're making use of an
existing intermediate language (c for instance, or something inside
the gcc compiler)?

Cheers,
Benjohn

Jeremy McAnally

12/10/2006 3:00:00 PM

0

They are working on an official Ruby spec and testing suite.

...and it appears that I forgot the URL (if they had one...).

--Jeremy

On 12/8/06, Edwin Fine <efine145-nospam01@usa.net> wrote:
> AFAIK, Ruby does not have a formal language specification. The language
> is pretty much defined by the Ruby C code (a Bison parser created from
> parse.y). This makes it difficult to have a high degree of confidence
> that any other implementations will match the original Ruby's behavior
> precisely. This is a problem that the JRuby developers highlighted in a
> recent interview
> (http://www.oreillynet.com/ruby/blog/2006/07/interviewing_the_jruby_de...).
>
> From the interview:
> -----
> "I would really like to see multiple implementations of Ruby the
> language end up generating a consistent definition of Ruby that is not
> determined by someone changing a line of C code. I give great credit to
> the C Ruby developers in designing a great language, but the lack of a
> formal language specification will eventually become a liability. The
> more implementations hopefully will highlight the need for a formal
> language specification."
> -----
>
> Maybe things have changed since then; if so, I haven't seen anything
> about it. I think that one really major contribution that the Rubinius
> project could make (besides another interpreter) would be to create an
> initial formal language specification. Of course, it is a complex,
> horrible, thankless, and time-consuming job to do this for anything but
> a toy language, so I don't foresee a plethora of volunteers :)
>
> --
> Posted via http://www.ruby-....
>
>

dblack

12/10/2006 3:13:00 PM

0

James Gray

12/10/2006 4:38:00 PM

0

On Dec 10, 2006, at 9:12 AM, dblack@wobblini.net wrote:

> Hi --
>
> On Mon, 11 Dec 2006, Jeremy McAnally wrote:
>
>> They are working on an official Ruby spec and testing suite.
>
> Official, or formal? (I've been in favor of both for a long time --
> just wondering which this is.)

Well it was discussed at the Ruby Implementors Summit where Matz was
present and I hear Matz himself has contributed to the effort, for
what that's worth.

We should remember though that the spec is for Ruby 1.8. Ruby 1.9
does not have one and Matz doesn't want to build one for it yet, as I
understand it.

James Edward Gray II