In an earlier post I was talking about JRuby and IronRuby a bit. One of my thoughts was that we need to be able to run these Ruby-(or insert language here)-in-a-VM either interpreted - or to compile them.

JRuby compilation 

JRuby has AOT (ahead of time) compilation as of 1.1 which is in beta currently. I am not sure when it is ‘due’ but it seems like it will not be too far off. This way - if you want to make a jar out of some jruby files - you should be good to go.

.Net Ruby compilation

..is a bit more complicated. There are currently 2 Rubies for .net - the Ruby.net (formerly Gardens point) compiler - that is a compiler for ruby - it takes .rb files - and turns them into an assembly. On the other hand - you have the IronRuby implementation being atop the DLR (dynamic language runtime - Microsoft.scripting runtime). IronRuby - as I can see it - is meant to run interpreted - through the DLR.

Neither IronRuby nor Ruby.net is not nearly as together as JRuby. Semantics for implementing interfaces are not there in Ruby.net, property style set/get is ugly (set_PropertyName is how it looks in the Ruby.net usage). You cannot use ‘classic ruby style naming (vs pascal naming that is prevelant in .net).

Here is a recent post ref’d off the Ruby.net mail group comparing IronRuby and Ruby.net.

Anyhow - there is my current update. Microsoft seems to have done something really good with WPF - the rest of the world seems to be doing better in just about every other area. Vista seems to be an embarrassment… Ugh for MS.

-Chris

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