Hello Matt,
for me I can tell the story about losing interests in MacRuby and stopping to
use it began with rejecting feature suggestions/requests here on the mailing
list. For example the automated snake_case to humbleCase and vise
versa conversion. Just by the saying 'JRuby does it to so why not MacRuby as
well?' feature request got ignored and rejected.
The second next show stopper for me was and still is to be forced to use Xcode.
I wonder how people can be productive with Xcode but somehow they manage to be
it. I couldn't so I have no chance to get comfortable with MacRuby. I pretty
much love tools like Sublime Text2 and the ZSH or RubyMine but all these tools
become pretty much useless for every MacRuby related project. Just my thought
here!
The third and last thing on my list of 'why I stopped using MacRuby' is - For
me MacRuby looks just like an Cocoa wrapper with Ruby'ish syntax but I think
MacRuby should be real Ruby interpreter implementation with Gem's allowing to
connect to Apple frameworks API's like Cocoa. Using MacRuby with RVM or rbenv
is like pain in the ass. Gem handling of MacRuby feels not like Gem handling in
other rubies.
These are my 3 points why I stopped using MacRuby and thanks to your posting my
hope awakes again that sometimes in the future developing apps for OSX is not
a craftsmanship anymore but fun!
--Denny
________________________________
Von: Matt Aimonetti <mattaimone...@gmail.com>
An: MacRuby development discussions. <macruby-devel@lists.macosforge.org>
Gesendet: 0:06 Freitag, 6.April 2012
Betreff: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby
Many of you have been wondering what is going on with the MacRuby project given
the lack of up-to-date releases and overall communication.
I feel we owe you some explanation.
As a lot of you have noticed, our de-facto project leader Laurent Sansonetti
has been M.I.A since October 2011, his last post to this mailing list being
http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2011-October/008168.htmlannouncing
MacRuby 0.11 really soon.
His last commit was a change of license back in October:
https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby/commit/ac2a7a8e678d19e44d3c64a9508a8370d082dca2
Laurent is fine. As described on his twitter http://twitter.com/lrzand LinkedIn
http://www.linkedin.com/in/sansonettiaccounts, Laurent is no longer with Apple
and is clearly also no longer directly involved with the MacRuby project on a
day-to-day basis.
Laurent is currently busy with another project and and hopes to someday be able
to contribute to the MacRuby project again.
While no one on this list can speak for Apple, and Apple as a company does not
tend to comment on its future plans or intentions, I think it's reasonable to
imagine that Apple would be more than happy to have the MacRuby project decide
for itself what its destiny is and how to achieve it. If they did not want the
community to be involved or drive such a process, they would not have released
MacRuby as open source or created the project infrastructure to facilitate it.
It is time for us to stop looking to Apple to provide guidance, leadership and
coding for the project, in other words, and take on those challenges for
ourselves! MacRuby is already very powerful and comparatively stable as a
development platform, now it's time for us to take things to the next level.
I personally think it will finally allow us to communicate and collaborate on
the actual process of development as it occurs, rather than the previous
practice of simply seeing code appear from some hidden, internal branch which
was driven almost exclusively by a single person
Doing all of this in the open should lead to far more people being interested
in the project, not just as users but as developers and leaders. No one rushes
to fill a position that is occupied by someone else, but now we have a vacuum
to fill, and that can be a good thing in terms of encouraging more people to
step forward.
Here is how I see things and I would love to hear more about what you guys
think.
MacRuby is a great project, but:
* the target audience & projects aren't clear
* the target platform (OS X) isn't the one we all really want to target
(iOS)
* Cocoa's API is awesome but not user friendly/easy to grasp
What I'd like to suggest is the following:
1. Define clear goals for MacRuby that we can easily evaluate:
* Focus primarily on making MacRuby the tool to use for quickly
prototyping OS X and iOS applications.
* Remove dependency on libauto so MacRuby can run post Mountain Lion
and on iOS.2. Increase the number of contributors:
* Define areas of contribution:
* implementation itself (mainly requires C, C++ knowledge)
* prototyping focus (templates, wrapper APIs, modules, tools: a full
ecosystem aimed at being more productive)
* documentation (getting started, guides, FAQs, wiki, demos, hacker
guides)
* support
* empower contributors:
* move the website to github for easier contribution
* better release process and roadmap
* better process to review pull requests & give commit rights3. Improve
communication:
* start an active and official chat room (IRC, campfire like or
something else)
* open discussions about plans for the project and progress made
* better collaboration with other Ruby implementation teams (Rubinius,
JRuby, MagLev and of course Matz/C Ruby)
Let's not forget that MacRuby is and will remain a free Open Source project and
that means we need your help and support.
Without you, this project doesn't mean much so please voice your opinion and if
you decide to do so, become an active participant to MacRuby's success.
I would like to thank Apple for their historical support and Laurent for
starting this project and all his work so far. Without those contributions,
MacRuby would never have existed and the project will more than welcome any
future participation by either Apple or Laurent.
At the same time, I don't think the future of this project can or should rest
on the shoulders of a single corporate entity, or that of a single individual.
That does not encourage the kind of broad participation, or the kind of overall
longevity (in the form of future generations of contributors) that Open Source
projects really need to survive over the long term.
Finally, I'd like to make clear that I see myself more in a role of a
facilitator than a technical leader on the order of what Laurent was. This role
has been left vacant for more than 6 months now and needs to be filled by a
group of people with greater technical skills than mine. Additional
contributors are therefore more than welcome to join the team, and their
support will be as much appreciated as it is needed.
Finally, in addition to the already numerous great MacRuby contributors and
soon to become contributors, Evan Phoenix (Rubinius) agreed to act as an
advisor for the project.
So, MacRuby community what do you think?
- Matt
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