IronRuby 1.0 Released

by Werner Schuster on Apr 13, 2010 |

Three years after the first official announcement it's done: IronRuby 1.0 has been released.

IronRuby 1.0 is compatible with Ruby 1.8.6. According to current plans, 1.0 will be the last IronRuby version to support 1.8.x; starting with the IronRuby 1.1, the IronRuby team will target Ruby 1.9.x

How compatible is IronRuby 1.0 to Ruby? ironruby.info shows the latest test run results. The answer to the big question is "Yes" - IronRuby runs Rails up to version 2.3.5.

One issue right now with only supporting 1.8.6: Rails 3 won't run because it requires Ruby 1.8.7 or Ruby 1.9. Since the final release of Rails 3 is a few months away, that shouldn't be a major issue just yet, particularly since the IronRuby 1.x stream will gain Ruby 1.9 features soon.

One new way to use IronRuby is on Microsoft's upcoming Windows Phone 7 platform, which is programmed with Silverlight. Tomas Matousek shows how to use IronRuby on Windows Phone 7, and also explains some of the limitations. One issue is the lack Reflection.Emit on the Windows Phone 7 version of Silverlight - which means IronRuby can't JIT Ruby code. The only way to run IronRuby programs is to always run in the interpreter, which isn't going yield the best performance. This issue is similar to JRuby on Android, which also has to run in interpreter-only mode on Android.

A look at proposed IronRuby projects for the Ruby Summer of Code shows some of the areas where work is needed to improve IronRuby or its library and tool support.

For more information on IronRuby, IronRuby team member Jimmy Schementi's blog is a good starting point, as well as InfoQ's IronRuby tag.

Related Editorial

Speed Matters: See why Nike, Groupon, and Comcast are using New Relic

Making the Shift from Relational to NoSQL

Faster PHP Through Java

Why NoSQL - Three Trends Disrupting the Database Status Quo

Infographic: Just How Big is the Nerd Economy

Related Sponsor

Get code level visibility into your web apps. All for free.

Try New Relic Today.

Hello stranger!

You need to Register an InfoQ account or to post comments. But there's so much more behind being registered.

Get the most out of the InfoQ experience.

Tell us what you think

Community comments

IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Jörg W Mittag Posted

Re: IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Werner Schuster Posted

Re: IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Jörg W Mittag Posted

Tutorial on running on IIS without installing Ruby first by Jeremy Durham Posted

IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Jörg W Mittag

There's a good chance that future maintenance releases of IronRuby 1.0 might run Rails 3. Even though IronRuby implements Ruby 1.8.6 and Rails 3 requires Ruby 1.8.7, Rails doesn't actually use every feature of Ruby 1.8.7. It's possible that the subset of 1.8.7 features Rails actually uses will be implemented in a future maintenance release of IronRuby 1.0, guarded by a commandline switch. There's been some discussion about this on the mailinglist and the IronRuby maintainers are open to that idea. (Especially if someone else does the actual work of writing the patches ...)

Re: IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Werner Schuster

Looking at the mailing list discussions (the ones I linked to), I gathered that any 1.8.7 or 1.9.x changes would only come in the 1.1 stream, ie. not in maintenance releases of 1.0.

Tutorial on running on IIS without installing Ruby first by Jeremy Durham

I'd love to see *the* definitive article on deploying a Rails 2.3.x app to IIS without first having to install Ruby on the box. Something akin to warbler, where you can run a rake task, and your app is fully packaged into something that runs on IIS. Is the article out there already? It is a pipe dream? If so, what will it take to make that a reality?

Re: IronRuby 1.0 and Rails 3 by Jörg W Mittag

You're right. I completely mis-interpreted the second half of that thread. Wishful thinking, I guess!

Sorry for the confusion. Is there any way to delete or edit comments?