Back in January I did a post on getting started with IronRuby. That post was based on Rev. 75 of the SVN tree. As of today (June 9th) the SVN tree is up to Rev. 113. Obviously with things like RailsConf and TechEd driving a lot of the core teams work, a number of things have changed since January. This post will basically be a rehash of the previous one, but updated for all the new quirks that have been introduced.
Getting The Source
As before, I recommend using TortoiseSVN to grab the source. Downloading will take a bit, after the 3.5MB of source is downloaded you should end up with a directory structure like the following:
Compiling IronRuby
Inside of the trunk directory you will find the IronRuby.sln file, double-clicking it will open the solution (note that the solution file is now in VS2008 format instead of the previous VS2005 format). You may get a warning, you can select “Load the Project Normally” and uncheck “Ask me this for all projects in the solution.”
Once the solution is loaded, keep the solution on the “Debug” configuration. Do NOT select “ExternalDebug” (you’ll get broken references if you do):
Next we will manually remove the “SIGNED” compilation symbol from all the projects, as of Rev. 113 you have to manually remove it from the IronRuby.Libraries, Microsoft.Scripting, and Microsoft.Scripting.Core (be sure not to delete the DLR symbol) projects.
Once those are removed you can build the source!
Running That Which You Have Wrought
Where has previously our compilation would output into a bin\Debug folder, the resulting files are now found in \trunk\build\debug, which should look like this:
Due to a conflict with rubinius, the rbx executable is now ir.
As before you can just run ir.exe and enter the wonderful world of ruby, or you can continue on to see how we roll in the .NET world.
Speaking C# With A Ruby Accent
The initial steps are basically the same as before, start a new C# console project and add references to Microsoft.Scripting.dll, Microsoft.Scripting.Core.dll, IronRuby.dll, and IronRuby.Libraries.dll.
We are going to create a simple console app that shows passing variables into and out of a ruby script.
The below program should be a good example:
using System;
using Ruby;
using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
namespace IronRubyConsoleApp
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
ScriptRuntime irruntime = IronRuby.CreateRuntime();
ScriptEngine ir = IronRuby.GetEngine(irruntime);
ScriptScope scope = ir.CreateScope();
ScriptSource script = ir.CreateScriptSourceFromString(“puts \”Hello, #{name}!\”\ninput + 2″);
scope.SetVariable(“name”, “.NET”);
scope.SetVariable(“input”, 2);
int x = script.Execute<int>(scope);
Console.WriteLine(string.Format(“The Result was {0}”, x));
Console.ReadLine();
}
}
}
You can see a clear hierarchy here:
We have a Runtime
That has an Engine
That has a Scope
That has a Source
We create a runtime, and we get our IronRuby engine into the runtime, we create a scope and load a script using that engine. Set a couple of variables in the scope and then execute the script within the scope that we have set the variables in.
Hopefully this is enough to get you started, you should probably check out the other CreateScriptSource methods that the engine contains, you have a veritable cornucopia of options:
Ruby with a .NET Accent
Another of the popular activities with IronRuby, if not the most popular, is going to be interfacing with both the .NET framework and other .NET code. The below example shows us interfacing with System.Windows.Forms and making a simple GUI app.
require ‘mscorlib’
require ‘ System.Windows.Forms, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089′
require ‘System.Drawing, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a’
Swf=System::Windows::Forms
Sd=System::Drawing
class RubyForm <Swf::Form
def add_button text, location
button = Swf::Button.new
button.Text = text
button.Location = location
self.Controls.Add button
button
end
def initialize
self.Text = “RubyForm”
@rbutton = add_button “Click Me!”, Sd::Point.new(150, 150)
@rbutton2 = add_button “Click Me!”, Sd::Point.new(150, 100)
@rbutton.Click {|sender, e| Swf::MessageBox.show ‘Hello World!’}
@rbutton2.Click {|sender, e| Swf::MessageBox.show ‘Hello, .NET!’}
end
end
rf = RubyForm.new
rf.ShowDialog
As you can see above, when requiring items from the GAC we must include the Fully Qualified Name, including version and StrongNameToken if applicable. The above code inherits from System.Windows.Forms.Form and adds a helper class for adding buttons and wires up a couple of event handlers. Again this is just a simple example to get you started.
Summary
In this post we downloaded the IronRuby source, compiled it, and worked with IronRuby both from C# and by running a ruby script against .NET objects. Hopefully this gets you going a little faster and onto the fun stuff quicker!
Links
IronRuby Homepage
IronRuby RubyForge Project
Ruby Language Homepage
John Lam’s homepage
passionate developers in this region, and some from outside. This was no ordinary conference though, this was camping! We had no electricity, no flushing toilets, and a hand pump for running water. The great thing about the lack of power though is that distraction was at an absolute minimum, all we could really do was talk and listen. I kept a camp journal, below is the transcription (with some embellishment):
