![]() | |
Original author(s) | Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime Team |
---|---|
Developer(s) | .NET Foundation |
Initial release | August 31, 2007 |
Stable release | IronRuby 1.0 / April 12, 2010 |
Preview release | IronRuby 1.1.3 / March 13, 2011 |
Repository | github |
Written in | C# |
Operating system | Windows, Linux, macOS |
Platform | .NET Framework, Mono |
Type | Ruby programming language compiler [1] [2] |
License | Apache License 2.0 |
Website | www |
IronRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language targeting Microsoft .NET Framework. It is implemented on top of the Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), a library running on top of the Common Language Infrastructure that provides dynamic typing and dynamic method dispatch, among other things, for dynamic languages.
The project is currently inactive, with the last release of IronRuby (version 1.1.3) being in March 2011.
On April 30, 2007, at MIX 2007, Microsoft announced IronRuby, which uses the same name as Wilco Bauwer's IronRuby project with permission. [3] It was planned to be released to the public at OSCON 2007. [4]
On July 23, 2007, as promised, John Lam and the DLR Design Team presented the pre-Alpha version of the IronRuby compiler at OSCON. He also announced a quick timeline for further integration of IronRuby into the open source community. [5]
On August 31, 2007, John Lam and the DLR Design Team released the code in its pre-alpha stage on RubyForge. [6] The source code has continued to be updated regularly by the core Microsoft team (but not for every check-in). The team also does not accept community contributions for the core Dynamic Language Runtime library, at least for now. [7]
On July 24, 2008, the IronRuby team released the first binary alpha version, in line with OSCON 2008. [8] On November 19, 2008, they released a second Alpha version.
The team actively worked to support Rails on IronRuby. [9] [10] Some Rails functional tests started to run, but a lot of work still needed to be done to be able to run Rails in a production environment. [11]
On May 21, 2009, they released 0.5 version in conjunction with RailsConf 2009. With this version, IronRuby could run some Rails applications, but still not on a production environment. [12]
Version 0.9 was announced as OSCON 2009. [13] This version improved performance. [14] Version 1.0 RC1 became available on November 20, 2009. [15]
Version 1.0 became available on April 12, 2010, in two different versions:
The IronRuby team planned to support Ruby 1.8.6 only for 1.0 point releases, and 1.9 version only for upcoming 1.x releases, skipping support for Ruby 1.8.7. [17] [18]
In July 2010, Microsoft let go Jimmy Schementi, one of two remaining members of the IronRuby core team, and stopped funding the project. [19] [20] In October 2010 Microsoft announced the Iron projects (IronRuby and IronPython) were being changed to "external" projects and enabling "community members to make contributions without Microsoft's involvement or sponsorship by a Microsoft employee". [21]
The last published release of IronRuby was on March 13, 2011 as version 1.1.3. [22]
IronRuby may run as well on Mono as it does on Microsoft Common Language Runtime (CLR), [23] but as the IronRuby team only tests it with the CLR on Windows., [24] it may not build on Mono depending on the build. [25] [26] [27]
The interoperability between IronRuby classes and regular .NET Framework classes is very limited because many Ruby classes are not .NET classes. [28] However, better support for dynamic languages in .NET 4.0 may increase interoperability in the future. [29] [30]
IronRuby was supported on Silverlight. It could be used as a scripting engine in the browser just like the JavaScript engine. [31] IronRuby scripts were passed like simple client-side JavaScript-scripts in <script>
-tags. It is then also possible to modify embedded XAML markup. [32]
The technology behind this was called Gestalt. [33]
//DLRinitiationscript. <scriptsrc="http://gestalt.ironruby.net/dlr-latest.js"type="text/javascript"> //Client-sidescriptpassedtoIronRubyandSilverlight. <scripttype="text/ruby">window.Alert("HellofromRuby") </script>
The same worked for IronPython. [34]
IronRuby integrated RubySpec, which is a project to write a complete, executable specification for the Ruby programming language. The IronRuby Git repo includes a copy of the RubySpec tests, including the MSpec test framework. [35]
IronRuby was previously released under the Microsoft Public License, which is OSI-certified BSD-style license. [36]
On July 16, 2010, Microsoft re-licensed IronRuby along with the DLR under the Apache License 2.0. [37]
Ruby is an interpreted, high-level, general-purpose programming language which supports multiple programming paradigms. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto in Japan.
Visual Basic (VB), originally called Visual Basic .NET (VB.NET), is a multi-paradigm, object-oriented programming language, implemented on .NET, Mono, and the .NET Framework. Microsoft launched VB.NET in 2002 as the successor to its original Visual Basic language, the last version of which was Visual Basic 6.0. Although the ".NET" portion of the name was dropped in 2005, this article uses "Visual Basic [.NET]" to refer to all Visual Basic languages released since 2002, in order to distinguish between them and the classic Visual Basic. Along with C# and F#, it is one of the three main languages targeting the .NET ecosystem. Microsoft updated its VB language strategy on 6 February 2023, stating that VB is a stable language now and Microsoft will keep maintaining it.
JScript is Microsoft's legacy dialect of the ECMAScript standard that is used in Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser.
Jython is an implementation of the Python programming language designed to run on the Java platform. The implementation was formerly known as JPython until 1999.
ASP.NET is a server-side web-application framework designed for web development to produce dynamic web pages. It was developed by Microsoft to allow programmers to build dynamic web sites, applications and services. The name stands for Active Server Pages Network Enabled Technologies.
IronPython is an implementation of the Python programming language targeting the .NET Framework and Mono. The project is currently maintained by a group of volunteers at GitHub. It is free and open-source software, and can be implemented with Python Tools for Visual Studio, which is a free and open-source extension for Microsoft's Visual Studio IDE.
SharpDevelop is a discontinued free and open source integrated development environment (IDE) for the .NET Framework, Mono, Gtk# and Glade# platforms. It supports development in C#, Visual Basic .NET, Boo, F#, IronPython and IronRuby programming languages.
JRuby is an implementation of the Ruby programming language atop the Java Virtual Machine, written largely in Java. It is free software released under a three-way EPL/GPL/LGPL license. JRuby is tightly integrated with Java to allow the embedding of the interpreter into any Java application with full two-way access between the Java and the Ruby code.
Phalanger is a compiler front end for compiling PHP source code into CIL byte-code, which can be further processed by the .NET Framework's just-in-time compiler. The project was started at Charles University and is supported by Microsoft. Phalanger was discontinued in favor of the more modern PeachPie compiler, which utilizes the Roslyn API.
Microsoft Silverlight is a discontinued application framework designed for writing and running rich internet applications, similar to Adobe's runtime, Adobe Flash. While early versions of Silverlight focused on streaming media, later versions supported multimedia, graphics, and animation, and gave support to developers for CLI languages and development tools. Silverlight was one of the two application development platforms for Windows Phone, but web pages using Silverlight did not run on the Windows Phone or Windows Mobile versions of Internet Explorer, as there was no Silverlight plugin for Internet Explorer on those platforms.
Comparison of the Java and .NET platforms.
The Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) from Microsoft runs on top of the Common Language Runtime (CLR) and provides computer language services for dynamic languages. These services include:
Moonlight is a discontinued free and open source implementation for Linux and other Unix-based operating systems of the Microsoft Silverlight application framework, developed and then abandoned by the Mono Project. Like Silverlight, Moonlight was a web application framework which provided capabilities similar to those of Adobe Flash, integrating multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into a single runtime environment.
LOLCODE is an esoteric programming language inspired by lolspeak, the language expressed in examples of the lolcat Internet meme. The language was created in 2007 by Adam Lindsay, a researcher at the Computing Department of Lancaster University.
IronScheme is an implementation of the Scheme programming language targeting the Microsoft .NET Framework. IronScheme is a complete rewrite of IronLisp, incorporating lessons learnt while developing IronLisp.
The .NET Framework is a proprietary software framework developed by Microsoft that runs primarily on Microsoft Windows. It was the predominant implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) until being superseded by the cross-platform .NET project. It includes a large class library called Framework Class Library (FCL) and provides language interoperability across several programming languages. Programs written for .NET Framework execute in a software environment named the Common Language Runtime (CLR). The CLR is an application virtual machine that provides services such as security, memory management, and exception handling. As such, computer code written using .NET Framework is called "managed code". FCL and CLR together constitute the .NET Framework.
Steve Yegge is an American computer programmer and blogger who is known for writing about programming languages, productivity and software culture through his "Stevey's Drunken Blog Rants" site, followed by "Stevey's Blog Rants."
Microsoft Silverlight is an application framework for writing and running rich web applications that was actively developed and marketed by Microsoft from 2007 to 2012. This is a technical overview of the platform's history.
Mono is a free and open-source .NET Framework-compatible software framework. Originally by Ximian, it was later acquired by Novell, and is now being led by Xamarin, a subsidiary of Microsoft and the .NET Foundation. Mono can be run on many software systems.
Today, you must check the source code out of the IronRuby Subversion repository on Rubyforge. You will need a Subversion client; we recommend TortoiseSVN. To build the sources from the command line, you must also have Ruby installed on your computer already
The DLR does not accept contributions from the community (...) Today we do not push to SVN on every successful SNAP check-in
We're shipping our first binary release. In this package, we're taking a "batteries included" approach and shipping the Ruby standard libraries in it
I don't think we're near the end game yet :) We're barely able to run Rails functional tests now, and there's a lot more library work to be done before we can start thinking about deployment
IronRuby running Rails is not new, but doing it well or completely – is. IronRuby can now run real Rails applications, rather than just toy-hello-world examples. This does not mean IronRuby on Rails is ready for production, but it's a great measure of forward progress
IronRuby now comes in two flavors - one that runs on top of .NET 4.0, and one that runs on any earlier framework starting with .NET 2.0 SP1. The .NET 4.0 flavor features faster startup time, compatibility with C#'s dynamic keyword, and access to the new features in .NET 4.0. So, the .NET 4.0 flavor is the preferred download now, as the Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0 is publicly available as of today. For Mono compatibility, use the zip file release for 2.0 SP1.
IronRuby 1.0.x releases: ONLY ruby-1.8.6 compatible; IronRuby 1.x releases: ONLY ruby-1.9 compatible
Overall, I see a serious lack of commitment to IronRuby, and dynamic language on .NET in general. At the time of my leaving Tomas and myself were the only Microsoft employees working on IronRuby
For as long as we remember, most new versions of IronPython, IronRuby or the Dynamic Language Runtime exposed new missing functionality in Mono
The IronRuby GIT repo includes a copy of the RubySpec tests, including the MSpec test framework, under External.LCA_RESTRICTED\Languages\IronRuby\mspec. This makes it easy to modify existing tests or write new tests, and fix the bugs in the IronRuby sources, all in a single commit to the IronRuby repo.