February 2010 - macruby-changes - lists.macosforge.org

[3391] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3391 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3391 Author: lsansonetti(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 18:25:19 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- show the author Modified Paths: -------------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt Modified: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt 2010-02-01 02:22:52 UTC (rev 3390) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt 2010-02-01 02:25:19 UTC (rev 3391) @@ -10,6 +10,12 @@ --- h1(title). <%= h((a)page.title) %> +<div class="author"> + By <%= member_name((a)page.author) %> +</div> + +<div class='tutorial'> + h3. Introduction Historically, the Ruby language has been firmly founded in the single-processor paradigm. Mainline Ruby uses "green threads":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_threads to simulate multiprocessing in Ruby; unfortunately, it’s difficult to properly harness the power of multicore processors with green threads. In late 2009, MacRuby bridged Ruby threads to native threads and removed the Global Interpreter Lock. Recently, however, MacRuby took a step forward that no other Ruby implementation - indeed, no other dynamic language - has offered: support for Apple’s "Grand Central Dispatch":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch library. @@ -132,3 +138,5 @@ h3. The Future There’s much more to find in MacRuby’s support for Grand Central Dispatch - @Dispatch::Semaphore@ is a powerful tool for inter-thread communication and resource management, and the @Dispatch::Source@ class provides an elegant yet low-level foundation for event-based programming. Soon to come is the release of ControlTower, a web server built entirely in MacRuby with GCD. Additionally, the MacRuby team is planning a library to provide high-level, Ruby-esque abstractions on top of the GCD primitives. All in all, it’s a tremendously exciting time to be a Ruby programmer on Mac OS X! + +</div>

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[3390] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3390 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3390 Author: lsansonetti(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 18:22:52 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- misc format problems, refer to GCD tutorial Modified Paths: -------------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt Modified: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt 2010-02-01 02:22:31 UTC (rev 3389) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt 2010-02-01 02:22:52 UTC (rev 3390) @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ --- -title: MacRuby 0.5 final release +title: MacRuby 0.5 created_at: 2010-01-31 15:33:21.513758 -08:00 blog_post: true layout: blog_entry @@ -13,11 +13,11 @@ <% end %> <%= RedCloth.new((a)page.excerpt).to_html %> -You can download it from "here":http://www.macruby.org/files/MacRuby%200.5.zip. Please note that this package only runs on Snow Leopard and above. Users on Leopard can also use MacRuby by building the sources from our repository. +You can download it from "here":http://www.macruby.org/files/MacRuby%200.5.zip. Please note that this package only runs on Snow Leopard and above. Users on Leopard can also use MacRuby by "building the sources":/source.html from our repository. Remember that while MacRuby is progressing fast, it is still not recommended for mainstream development yet. We believe that MacRuby is stable in a lot of areas but others are still a work in progress. -As usual, please give it a try and be sure to "report":http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html any problems you encounter to us. +As usual, please give it a try and be sure to "report":/contact-us.html any problems you encounter to us. If you're just getting started with MacRuby 0.5, make sure to check out our previous articles on the previous beta releases: "0.5 beta 1":http://macruby.org/blog/2009/10/07/macruby05b1.html and "0.5 beta 2":http://macruby.org/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.html. @@ -71,6 +71,6 @@ In this release, we completed our GCD support. Every C API of Grand Central Dispatch is now available from MacRuby. We also completed documentation (as rdoc comments), covered everything with specs and we now intend to support this API in further releases. -To get you started with GCD, we wrote a separate tutorial. Check it out! +To get you started with GCD, we wrote a "separate tutorial":/documentation/gcd.html. Check it out! We are considering providing a higher level layer of APIs in the future.

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[3389] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3389 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3389 Author: lsansonetti(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 18:22:31 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- credit patrick, tag as a tutorial, fix some formatting issues Modified Paths: -------------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt Modified: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt 2010-02-01 02:08:12 UTC (rev 3388) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt 2010-02-01 02:22:31 UTC (rev 3389) @@ -1,6 +1,9 @@ --- title: An Introduction to GCD with MacRuby created_at: 2010-01-22 12:00:00 -04:00 +updated_at: 2010-01-22 12:00:00 -04:00 +author: patrick +tutorial: true filter: - erb - textile @@ -17,7 +20,7 @@ Queues, represented in MacRuby by the @Dispatch::Queue@ class, are data structures that execute tasks. Under the hood, GCD maintains a pool of POSIX threads to which queues dispatch their tasks; GCD will grow and shrink this pool dynamically and distribute its threads evenly among available processors. Queues can execute their tasks either concurrently or sequentially. All queues begin executing tasks in the order in which they were received, but concurrent queues can run many tasks at once, whereas serial queues wait for one to complete before starting the next. GCD provides three singleton concurrent queues and allows the creation any number of serial queues. Performing work on a queue is extremely easy: -<pre> +<pre class="commands"> # Create a new serial queue. queue = Dispatch::Queue.new('org.macruby.examples.gcd') # Synchronously dispatch some work to it. @@ -42,7 +45,7 @@ Ensuring that methods and data are accessed by one and only one thread at a time is a common problem in software development today. However, unlike languages such as Java and Objective-C, Ruby has no built-in language support for synchronization, relying instead on the Mutex and Monitor classes. However, GCD introduces another elegant idiom for synchronization that is higher-level than Mutex and significantly simpler than Monitor: -<pre> +<pre class="commands"> class MissileLauncher def initialize @queue = Dispatch::Queue.new('org.macruby.synchronizer') @@ -62,11 +65,11 @@ When working with queues, there will come a time when you need to ensure that a queue has executed all of its tasks. GCD provides the @Group@ class for this purpose. Groups make synchronizing queue execution easy: by passing a group as a parameter to a Queue’s @#async@ or @#sync@ method, you register that queue’s task with the group. After that, you can either wait for all the tasks that a group monitors by calling the @#wait@ method on the group in question or you can register a block to be run as a group completion callback with the group’s #notify method. -h1. Groups in Action: Futures +h3. Groups in Action: Futures Languages like "Io":http://www.iolanguage.com/ and "Oz":http://www.mozart-oz.org/ provide the notion of "futures":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises: proxy objects that perform expensive computations in the background. By using GCD queues to execute the tasks and groups to synchronize the tasks’ execution, we have a simple, concise and reliable implementation of futures in MacRuby: -<pre> +<pre class="commands"> include Dispatch class Future def initialize(&block) @@ -87,7 +90,7 @@ </pre> Now it’s easy to schedule long-running tasks in the background: -<pre> +<pre class="commands"> some_result = Future.new do p 'Engaging delayed computation!' sleep 2.5 @@ -101,7 +104,7 @@ Now let’s see an example of how easy it is to parallelize your code with the GCD’s groups and concurrent queues: -<pre> +<pre class="commands"> class Array def parallel_map(&block) result = []

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[3388] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3388 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3388 Author: pthomson(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 18:08:12 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- Converted my GCD article to Textile and added it to /content/documentation. Added Paths: ----------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/documentation/gcd.txt 2010-02-01 02:08:12 UTC (rev 3388) @@ -0,0 +1,131 @@ +--- +title: An Introduction to GCD with MacRuby +created_at: 2010-01-22 12:00:00 -04:00 +filter: + - erb + - textile +--- +h1(title). <%= h((a)page.title) %> + +h3. Introduction + +Historically, the Ruby language has been firmly founded in the single-processor paradigm. Mainline Ruby uses "green threads":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_threads to simulate multiprocessing in Ruby; unfortunately, it’s difficult to properly harness the power of multicore processors with green threads. In late 2009, MacRuby bridged Ruby threads to native threads and removed the Global Interpreter Lock. Recently, however, MacRuby took a step forward that no other Ruby implementation - indeed, no other dynamic language - has offered: support for Apple’s "Grand Central Dispatch":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Central_Dispatch library. +Grand Central Dispatch, or GCD, is a technology designed to let programmers easily harness the power of multi-core processors. GCD hides the details of creating, managing, and destroying POSIX threads from the programmer, making it trivial to write programs that take full advantage of the power of multicore and multiprocessor systems. GCD is built into the foundations of Mac OS X, implemented in both the kernel and userspace, and is so remarkably efficient that it’s being used within system frameworks such as Cocoa and CoreFoundation. + +h3. Queues: The What and the Why + +Queues, represented in MacRuby by the @Dispatch::Queue@ class, are data structures that execute tasks. Under the hood, GCD maintains a pool of POSIX threads to which queues dispatch their tasks; GCD will grow and shrink this pool dynamically and distribute its threads evenly among available processors. +Queues can execute their tasks either concurrently or sequentially. All queues begin executing tasks in the order in which they were received, but concurrent queues can run many tasks at once, whereas serial queues wait for one to complete before starting the next. GCD provides three singleton concurrent queues and allows the creation any number of serial queues. Performing work on a queue is extremely easy: + +<pre> +# Create a new serial queue. +queue = Dispatch::Queue.new('org.macruby.examples.gcd') +# Synchronously dispatch some work to it. +queue.sync do + puts 'Starting work!' + sleep 1.0 + puts 'Done!' +end +# Asynchronously dispatch some work to it. +queue.async do + puts 'Starting work!' + sleep 1.0 + puts 'Done!' +end +</pre> + +If you paste this code into a running @macirb@ prompt, you’ll see that the queue blocks until the task specified in the @#sync@ block is finished, while task we specified in the block we passed to the @#async@ method is executed asynchronously in the background. + +Queues have a number of advantages over POSIX threads or creating Ruby threads with @Thread@: whereas threads are memory-intensive and very expensive to create and destroy, queues are extremely lightweight; one can easily create tens of thousands of queues at one time, which would be either impossible or prohibitively slow with POSIX threads. Additionally, GCD’s low-level implementation means that its thread pool takes advantage of system-wide load balancing that a hand-rolled thread pool cannot. + +h3. A Real-Life Use Case: Synchronization + +Ensuring that methods and data are accessed by one and only one thread at a time is a common problem in software development today. However, unlike languages such as Java and Objective-C, Ruby has no built-in language support for synchronization, relying instead on the Mutex and Monitor classes. However, GCD introduces another elegant idiom for synchronization that is higher-level than Mutex and significantly simpler than Monitor: + +<pre> +class MissileLauncher + def initialize + @queue = Dispatch::Queue.new('org.macruby.synchronizer') + end + def launch! + # Because serial queues execute their tasks in FIFO order, we can be sure + # that only one thread will be running the passed block at any given time. + @queue.sync do + # critical section: here we arm the missiles and fire them. + puts "BOOM!" + end + end +end +</pre> + +h3. Synchronization with Groups + +When working with queues, there will come a time when you need to ensure that a queue has executed all of its tasks. GCD provides the @Group@ class for this purpose. Groups make synchronizing queue execution easy: by passing a group as a parameter to a Queue’s @#async@ or @#sync@ method, you register that queue’s task with the group. After that, you can either wait for all the tasks that a group monitors by calling the @#wait@ method on the group in question or you can register a block to be run as a group completion callback with the group’s #notify method. + +h1. Groups in Action: Futures + +Languages like "Io":http://www.iolanguage.com/ and "Oz":http://www.mozart-oz.org/ provide the notion of "futures":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futures_and_promises: proxy objects that perform expensive computations in the background. By using GCD queues to execute the tasks and groups to synchronize the tasks’ execution, we have a simple, concise and reliable implementation of futures in MacRuby: + +<pre> +include Dispatch +class Future + def initialize(&block) + # Each thread gets its own FIFO queue upon which we will dispatch + # the delayed computation passed in the &block variable. + Thread.current[:futures] ||= Queue.new("org.macruby.futures-#{Thread.current.object_id}") + @group = Group.new + # Asynchronously dispatch the future to the thread-local queue. + Thread.current[:futures].async(@group) { @value = block.call } + end + def value + # Wait for the computation to finish. If it has already finished, then + # just return the value in question. + @group.wait + @value + end +end +</pre> +Now it’s easy to schedule long-running tasks in the background: + +<pre> +some_result = Future.new do + p 'Engaging delayed computation!' + sleep 2.5 + :done # Your result would go here. +end +</pre> + +Accessing the value is as easy as calling @some_result.value@. + +h3. Parallelization and Synchronization + +Now let’s see an example of how easy it is to parallelize your code with the GCD’s groups and concurrent queues: + +<pre> +class Array + def parallel_map(&block) + result = [] + # Creating a group to synchronize block execution. + group = Dispatch::Group.new + # We will access the `result` array from within this serial queue, + # as without a GIL we cannot assume array access to be thread-safe. + result_queue = Dispatch::Queue.new('access-queue.#{result.object_id}') + 0.upto(size) do |idx| + # Dispatch a task to the default concurrent queue. + Dispatch::Queue.concurrent.async(group) do + temp = block[self[idx]] + result_queue.async(group) { result[idx] = temp } + end + end + # Wait for all the blocks to finish. + group.wait + result + end +end +</pre> + +This example uses the queue accessed through @Dispatch::Queue.concurrent@ to speed up @Array#map@ by spreading out the total work across the system’s available processors. From a two-core Macbook Air to a 16-core Mac Pro, GCD executes the tasks dispatched on the concurrent queue across all available processors. With fewer than a dozen lines of code, we’ve parallelized @#map@ and avoided race conditions by using groups to synchronize. + +h3. The Future + +There’s much more to find in MacRuby’s support for Grand Central Dispatch - @Dispatch::Semaphore@ is a powerful tool for inter-thread communication and resource management, and the @Dispatch::Source@ class provides an elegant yet low-level foundation for event-based programming. Soon to come is the release of ControlTower, a web server built entirely in MacRuby with GCD. Additionally, the MacRuby team is planning a library to provide high-level, Ruby-esque abstractions on top of the GCD primitives. All in all, it’s a tremendously exciting time to be a Ruby programmer on Mac OS X!

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[3387] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3387 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3387 Author: lsansonetti(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 17:59:02 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- added draft of final 0.5 blog post Added Paths: ----------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/index.txt MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/index.txt Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/31/macruby05.txt 2010-02-01 01:59:02 UTC (rev 3387) @@ -0,0 +1,76 @@ +--- +title: MacRuby 0.5 final release +created_at: 2010-01-31 15:33:21.513758 -08:00 +blog_post: true +layout: blog_entry +author: lrz +filter: + - erb + - textile +--- +<% @page[:excerpt] = capture_erb do %> +We are glad to announce the final release of MacRuby 0.5. After months of hard work and two successful beta releases, we believe 0.5 is good enough to replace the previous stable release, 0.4. +<% end %> +<%= RedCloth.new((a)page.excerpt).to_html %> + +You can download it from "here":http://www.macruby.org/files/MacRuby%200.5.zip. Please note that this package only runs on Snow Leopard and above. Users on Leopard can also use MacRuby by building the sources from our repository. + +Remember that while MacRuby is progressing fast, it is still not recommended for mainstream development yet. We believe that MacRuby is stable in a lot of areas but others are still a work in progress. + +As usual, please give it a try and be sure to "report":http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html any problems you encounter to us. + +If you're just getting started with MacRuby 0.5, make sure to check out our previous articles on the previous beta releases: "0.5 beta 1":http://macruby.org/blog/2009/10/07/macruby05b1.html and "0.5 beta 2":http://macruby.org/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.html. + +You can read about all the changes since the last beta in this "status report":http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-January/004064.html e-mail on the mailing-list, but here are the most visible changes: + +h3. HotCocoa Support + +HotCocoa is a thin & idiomatic Ruby layer that sits above Cocoa and other frameworks, developed by Rich Kilmer. MacRuby 0.5 now supports HotCocoa. + +HotCocoa used to be developed inside the MacRuby project, but we decided that it would have a better life on GitHub, where it is far easier for developers to submit contributions. HotCocoa also has been transformed as a gem and is included in the 0.5 package installer. Be sure to require rubygems before using it. + +<pre class="commands"> +require 'rubygems' +require 'hotcocoa' +include HotCocoa +application do |app| + win = window :size => [100,50] + b = button :title => 'Hello' + b.on_action { puts 'World!' } + win << b +end +</pre> + +If you're interested in HotCocoa, make sure to "fork the project":http://github.com/richkilmer/hotcocoa and start hacking! + +h3. More Elegant Ahead-of-Time Compilation + +The macrubyc command-line tool has been improved to support the compilation of multiple Ruby source file into dynamic libraries. This is useful when you have several executable sharing the same Ruby code. + +<pre class="commands"> +$ cd /tmp +$ echo "def hello(n); puts 'hello ' + n; end" > t1.rb +$ echo "def hello_world; hello 'world'; end" > t2.rb +$ echo "require 't1'; require 't2'; hello_world" > test.rb +$ macrubyc t1.rb t2.rb -o code.dylib --dylib +$ file code.dylib +code.dylib: Mach-O 64-bit dynamically linked shared library x86_64 +$ macrubyc test.rb code.dylib -o test +$ rm t1.rb t2.rb test.rb +$ ./test +hello world +</pre> + +Also, macrubyc now comes with a manpage which provides more information on how to use it. Check it out! + +<pre class="commands"> +$ man macrubyc +</pre> + +h3. Grand Central Dispatch Support + +In this release, we completed our GCD support. Every C API of Grand Central Dispatch is now available from MacRuby. We also completed documentation (as rdoc comments), covered everything with specs and we now intend to support this API in further releases. + +To get you started with GCD, we wrote a separate tutorial. Check it out! + +We are considering providing a higher level layer of APIs in the future. Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/index.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/index.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/01/index.txt 2010-02-01 01:59:02 UTC (rev 3387) @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 01 +created_at: 2010-01-31 15:33:21.512492 -08:00 +filter: erb +dirty: true +--- +<h2><%= h((a)page.title) %></h2> + +<% + articles = @pages.find(:all, :in_directory => @page.dir, :recursive => true, + :sort_by => "created_at", :reverse => true, :blog_post => true) + articles.delete(@page) + paginate(articles, 10) do |page| +-%> +<div class="article"> + <h1><%= link_to_page(page) %><span class="date">(<%= page.created_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d') %>)</span></h1> + + <div class="body"> + <%= render(page) %> + </div> +</div> +<% end -%> Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/index.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/index.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2010/index.txt 2010-02-01 01:59:02 UTC (rev 3387) @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 2010 +created_at: 2010-01-31 15:33:21.511147 -08:00 +filter: erb +dirty: true +--- +<h2><%= h((a)page.title) %></h2> + +<% + articles = @pages.find(:all, :in_directory => @page.dir, :recursive => true, + :sort_by => "created_at", :reverse => true, :blog_post => true) + articles.delete(@page) + paginate(articles, 10) do |page| +-%> +<div class="article"> + <h1><%= link_to_page(page) %><span class="date">(<%= page.created_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d') %>)</span></h1> + + <div class="body"> + <%= render(page) %> + </div> +</div> +<% end -%>

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[3386] MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009
by source_changes＠macosforge.org 01 Feb '10

01 Feb '10

Revision: 3386 http://trac.macosforge.org/projects/ruby/changeset/3386 Author: lsansonetti(a)apple.com Date: 2010-01-31 17:57:59 -0800 (Sun, 31 Jan 2010) Log Message: ----------- forgot to commit the blog post about 0.5 beta 2 Added Paths: ----------- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/17/ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.txt MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/index.txt Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/17/macruby05b2.txt 2010-02-01 01:57:59 UTC (rev 3386) @@ -0,0 +1,88 @@ +--- +title: MacRuby 0.5 beta 2 +created_at: 2009-11-17 13:13:23.794802 -08:00 +blog_post: true +layout: blog_entry +author: lrz +filter: + - erb + - textile +--- +<% @page[:excerpt] = capture_erb do %> +After a month of hard work we are pleased to offer the second beta of MacRuby 0.5. We are expecting one more beta before shipping the final 0.5. +<% end %> +<%= RedCloth.new((a)page.excerpt).to_html %> + +You can download it from "here":http://www.macruby.org/files/MacRuby%200.5%20beta%202.zip. Please note that this package only runs on Snow Leopard and above. Users on Leopard can also use MacRuby by building the sources from our repository. + +Remember that this is a development version of MacRuby provided for testing and experimentation purposes only. Even though many features are already quite stable at the time of this writing, some of them are still a work in progress. + +Please feel encouraged to give it a try and be sure to "report":http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html any problems you encounter to us. This will help us to ensure that the final release is of the highest possible quality. + +You can read about all the changes since the first beta in this "status report":http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2009-November/003286.html e-mail on the mailing-list, but here are the most visible changes: + +h3. Better Compatibility + +We fixed many compatibility bugs, allowing MacRuby to run rdoc, ri, "Rack":http://rack.rubyforge.org/ and "Sinatra":http://www.sinatrarb.com/. + +RI files are now generated as part of the project build and readable from the macri command-line tool. + +We are also able to run simple Rack and Sinatra web applications on MacRuby, using a simple GCD-based web-server that will be covered in an upcoming blog article. + +Additionally, MacRuby 0.5 beta 2 ships with experimental support for the BigDecimal, OpenSSL and JSON extensions. + +h3. Better Ahead-of-Time Compiler + +Many compiler bugs have been fixed and the macrubyc utility is now able to generate fat binaries, via the --arch argument. + +<pre class="commands"> +$ macrubyc hello.rb -o hello --arch i386 --arch x86_64 +</pre> + +Also, macrubyc will generate by default executables linking against MacRuby.framework dynamically, which greatly reduces the executable size. In order to build a full standalone executable, the --static argument must be passed. + +A new utility, called macruby_deploy, is now available to help you deploy your MacRuby applications. It provides options to compile ahead-of-time your application's Ruby source code as well as relocating the MacRuby framework inside the application bundle. This way your application is ready for deployment, with its source code hidden because it is pre-compiled. + +<pre class="commands"> +$ macruby_deploy +Usage: macruby_deploy [options] application-bundle + --compile Compile the bundle source code + --embed Embed MacRuby inside the bundle + --no-stdlib Do not embed the standard library + -v, --version Display the version +</pre> + +These functionalities are also available as Xcode targets, a few mouse clicks away. + +h3. DTrace Probes + +DTrace static probes have been added to the VM, providing the exact same support as MacRuby 0.4. + +"DTrace":http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTrace is a powerful tracing facility available since Leopard which allows you to trace the MacRuby runtime of any running application, in development or production. + +MacRuby ships with a few DTrace example scripts. Here is one which prints some information regarding objects collected by the GC at a given time. + +<pre class="commands"> +$ sudo dtrace -qs sample-macruby/DTrace/collected_objects64.d -p 72593 +Target pid: 72593 + +^C + + CLASS COUNT +-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- + __NSFastEnumerationEnumerator 100 + Method 101 + CommonLogger 102 + NSCFNumber 200 + Proc 202 + ByteString 203 + CTParser 204 + Time 204 + NSCFCharacterSet 400 + NSCheapMutableString 404 + NSPathStore2 606 + NSCFData 612 + NSCFDictionary 1204 + RubyArray 2434 + NSCFString 21240 +</pre> Added: MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/index.txt =================================================================== --- MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/index.txt (rev 0) +++ MacRubyWebsite/trunk/content/blog/2009/11/index.txt 2010-02-01 01:57:59 UTC (rev 3386) @@ -0,0 +1,22 @@ +--- +title: 11 +created_at: 2009-11-17 13:13:23.792653 -08:00 +filter: erb +dirty: true +--- +<h2><%= h((a)page.title) %></h2> + +<% + articles = @pages.find(:all, :in_directory => @page.dir, :recursive => true, + :sort_by => "created_at", :reverse => true, :blog_post => true) + articles.delete(@page) + paginate(articles, 10) do |page| +-%> +<div class="article"> + <h1><%= link_to_page(page) %><span class="date">(<%= page.created_at.strftime('%Y-%m-%d') %>)</span></h1> + + <div class="body"> + <%= render(page) %> + </div> +</div> +<% end -%>

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