ON the matter of deploying such apps.... On Windows the situation is dicey because the one-click installers -- which come prefabbed with FXRuby, openGL etc, use an ancient version of the VC++ compiler to generate the bindings. The downside of that is that certain gems that require building native extensions totally choke on any version of VC++ created after the Magna Carta. Or at least, after Version 6 of Visual C++.
Cygwin and MinGW-compiled versions of Ruby solve that problem for most extensions but there are a few that don't work because so many dependent libraries "expect" the MS version, and the threading support in the non-MS-compiler versions is ... funky. On balance, though, it's easy enough to deploy the one-click installer to windows apps. For libraries (that don't require native extensions) I use rubygems to distribute such code (just need to add your custom gems repository as a source). For applications I create a zip that one can run ruby setup.rb on. So the short answer to the question is where possible I use standard Ruby distribution mechanisms. Also, I use rake to automate... just about every repetitive task (maintenance, etc). Recent alternatives like Thor are also worth looking into. - Bob On Fri, Apr 16, 2010 at 11:22 AM, Publius Maximus <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Apr 15, 2010 at 8:56 PM, Malcolm Greene <[email protected]> wrote: >> Bob, >> >>> Happy to help if you need any assistance learning either F# or Ruby, >> offline or [NF] if you think other folks here would be interested. >> Seems like Malcolm and a few others may be interested. >> >> I would be especially interested in hearing what you're doing with Ruby >> on the desktop and how you're deploying Ruby client applications. > > I use FXRuby as the GUI toolkit for any desktop applications I build > in Ruby. FXRuby is based on the FOX C++ toolkit. > > One of my "if I could find a sponsor" projects is to develop a > generator for Rails that will make it possible to build consistent UIs > (usually, admin consoles) for a Rails application that would use > standard web protocols (JSON over HTTP for example) to interact with a > Rails application and the database behind it, giving you a dual > web/desktop interface to the data model and business logic already > baked into the rails app. Kind of like how the built-in generate > creates html views. > > - Bob > >> >> Malcolm >> [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[email protected] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
