In my opinion, I think two things are necessary for IronRuby to gain more momentum:
1. Allow static compilation of assemblies (.dll's, .exe's, etc.) and allow applications to be distributed in the standard Windows way. Good or bad, Windows users expect precompiled binaries that can be run and installed. This has been one of the biggest problems with standard CRuby - spotty support for distribution on the Windows platform. Certainly there have been attempts made at building .exe package makers, but they do not get enough maintenance and every new version of Ruby tends to break them. It's extremely cumbersome to have to install Ruby, wxRuby, and a myriad of other libraries on every user's machine (and make sure all the versions play well with each other!). Much easier to have one standard way of doing it. Also, from what I understand, RubyGems has problems on Windows. 2. Full Visual Studio integration is necessary. I realize that intellisense probably won't work as well with dynamic languages, but even some basic support would be a good thing. On top of that, you have other, even more important tools like the Windows Forms/WPF designers, debugging tools, database and web tools, etc. After developing GUI applications with designers, it's understandable that developers are not going to be interested in going back to doing this through code alone (or through a command line). Any productivity gains made by using Ruby will be offset by the loss in productivity from the lack of tools. I think Ruby is one of the most elegant and productive languages available today, but the lack of tools is what's preventing more widespread adoption, especially at the corporate/production environment level. All other things being equal (Visual Studio integration), I think that IronRuby will win over C# and VB in most cases and adoption will increase significantly. So here's to hoping that the excellent progress already made will continue! Just my humble opinion - thanks. David On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 2:51 PM, Ryan Riley <ryan.ri...@panesofglass.org>wrote: > On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 9:23 AM, Huw Collingbourne <li...@ruby-forum.com>wrote: > >> Re. Visual Studio integration. My company (SapphireSteel Software) >> released an alpha Visual Studio IDE for IronRuby about 18 months ago >> (Feb 2008): http://www.sapphiresteel.com/Ruby-In-Steel-For-IronRuby >> >> At that time, we offered to work with the IronRuby team to develop a >> more powerful IDE but we received very little interest. As a result we >> transferred our efforts into a developing additional tools for our >> standard Ruby IDE and also creating a new Flex/ActionScript IDE for >> Visual Studio. > > > Any chance that might pick back up? I remember you mentioned that you > weren't planning to keep it up with each release of IronRuby as it > developed, and I imagine that was a primary reason for the lack of interest. > Now that IR is closing in on 1.0, I would bet you would find more interest. > > Regards, > > > Ryan Riley > > Email: ryan.ri...@panesofglass.org > LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanriley > Blog: http://wizardsofsmart.net/ > Website: http://panesofglass.org/ > > > _______________________________________________ > Ironruby-core mailing list > Ironruby-core@rubyforge.org > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/ironruby-core > >
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