I'm a longtime RubyMotion user, and MacRuby user before that. I want to share my view as to what is the current status of MacRuby and what can happen in the future.
The momentum around MacRuby has been inexistent for almost a year and a half. That is, since Laurent Sansonetti (the original creator of MacRuby) left Apple, and that left the project without maintainers who were being paid to work on it. Only Watson and a couple other maintainers have been doing maintenance work and fixing a couple of bugs. Since nobody is being paid to maintain it, and (AFAIK) there is no company/individual whose main/critical systems depended on MacRuby, nobody has taken over the project. This is pretty much a chicken-egg situation. That said, a year ago, Laurent launched RubyMotion, a product based on MacRuby which introduces many new features, such as an ARC based memory model, and iOS support (dropping OSX support). Just a few days ago, in the first anniversary of RubyMotion, they introduced OSX support. Rubymotion is not open source, and the license costs 200$, plus an annual renewal fee of 99$. Two reasons that people sometimes argue for not investing in RM are: - "It's closed source, it might disappear at any moment": Actually, RubyMotion is probably more likely to stay in the long term than MacRuby was at the beginning. Despite Apple being a huge company, MacRuby was kind of an experiment that they could kill at any moment. For HipByte (the company behind Rubymotion), Rubymotion is its main product and the one that pays its employees. They are way more interested in watching RM succeed than Apple was in watching MacRuby succeed. - "It's too expensive": for playing around or releasing a pet project or free app that is not one of your ways of income, that might be the case. However, for a company or individual that wants to develop a product from which they hope to get some revenue, that price is ridiculous. I've seen PHP libraries for creating web forms more expensive than RubyMotion (nothing against those libraries). We're talking about a static compiler and a whole toolchain for developing iOS apps. If you're a student and want to play around with RubyMotion, there is a student discount available (send them an email for more information). So my conclusion is: If you want to develop OSX applications and you liked MacRuby, invest in getting a RubyMotion license, you probably won't be disappointed. Mark. On Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Christopher S Martin wrote: > They recently added support for OS X to rubymotion: > http://blog.rubymotion.com/post/49943751398/rubymotion-goes-2-0-and-gets-os-x-support-templates > That said, since rubymotion is (I believe) based off of macruby with some > additions specifically around static compilation of apps, I don't know if the > issues around GC/ARC would be any better in rubymotion on OS X, as I've only > used it for iOS. > > > > On Thu, May 16, 2013 at 10:56 AM, Jeff Dyck <fsjj...@gmail.com > (mailto:fsjj...@gmail.com)> wrote: > > Just wanted to add a ditto to this - I'm looking at migrating some old > > AppleScript Studio projects to MacRuby - my initial testing about a year > > ago was great, but it seems the stability of MacRuby as a development > > platform is in question to me at least... I've already been abandoned by > > AppleScript Studio, don't really want to have to go through relearning a > > new language and migrating projects a third time. > > > > I'm seeing a few comments on RubyMotion - does that work for developing OS > > X projects as well? I was under the impression that was for iOS only, but > > I can't say I've looked into it much. > > > > Jeff > > > > On May 16, 2013, at 10:40 AM, Michael Shantzis <mich...@shantzis.com > > (mailto:mich...@shantzis.com)> wrote: > > > > > Hello all (and especially Carolyn), > > > > > > I just want to say that I have the same question, specifically regarding > > > the > > > GC/ARC issue. > > > > > > The context in which this came up was very revealing. I had been > > > developing a > > > fairly complex Cocoa project (ARC enabled) and decided that I had to add > > > some tests. > > > Using MacRuby seemed like the natural solution. I quickly noticed, > > > though, that I > > > couldn't. > > > > > > Is there still any momentum behind MacRuby? Is there any solution to the > > > issue > > > of mixing it with ARC? I really hope the answer to these two questions > > > is "yes." > > > > > > Thank you, > > > Michael Shantzis > > > > > > > > > On May 16, 2013, at 8:32 AM, Carolyn Ann Grant > > > <carolyn.ann.gr...@gmail.com (mailto:carolyn.ann.gr...@gmail.com)> wrote: > > > > > >> Hi, I've got a question about the future of MacRuby. I like it, and have > > >> started working on a project or two using it, but I've been reading > > >> about GC and ARC, Ruby 2.0, RubyMotion and so on, and wonder where > > >> MacRuby is going? I'm quite concerned because I've put a good amount of > > >> time into my MacRuby projects. > > >> > > >> I wish I had the knowledge and skill to help with MacRuby - I really do > > >> like it! - but unfortunately I don't. I also don't want to invest a lot > > >> of further time in MacRuby if it's not going anywhere. (And I really > > >> can't spare the $200 it would take to buy RubyMotion.) > > >> > > >> I know this comes across as a bit impertinent, but I really would like > > >> to know what's happening with MacRuby development. Thanks! > > >> _______________________________________________ > > >> MacRuby-devel mailing list > > >> MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > > >> (mailto:MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org) > > >> https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macruby-devel > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > > > MacRuby-devel mailing list > > > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > > > (mailto:MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org) > > > https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macruby-devel > > > > _______________________________________________ > > MacRuby-devel mailing list > > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org > > (mailto:MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org) > > https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macruby-devel > > _______________________________________________ > MacRuby-devel mailing list > MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org (mailto:MacRuby-devel@lists.macosforge.org) > https://lists.macosforge.org/mailman/listinfo/macruby-devel > >
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