November 2010 - MacRuby-devel - lists.macosforge.org

Is is possible to debug a MacRuby Cocoa app?
by Ryan Porter 22 Nov '10

22 Nov '10

Hello, and thank you very much to the developers of MacRuby. It's an amazing technology and I hope to see it continue to grow. I've managed to figure out, after an hour or two of wasted time, that although MacRuby now includes a debugger, that debugger can't be used to debug a MacRuby Cocoa app. Not only through XCode, but at all. Is that correct? The release notes proudly announce that MacRuby now includes a debugger but they neglect to mention how to use it. After some research I eventually discovered that there is no way to use the debugger to debug a Cocoa app. If that's true, then lack of a debugger eliminates any benefit that using Ruby could bring to the Cocoa experience. Objective C syntax is truly nasty, but if there is no debugger available for Cocoa apps written with MacRuby then it just doesn't make sense to use Ruby to make a Cocoa app. Especially with Objective C 2.0's simplified syntax and garbage collection. "You don't need a debugger for Ruby code", is simply not a realistic solution. TDD and BDD tools for desktop Cocoa apps are still inadequate, and even with TDD you often still need a debugger. MacRuby isn't going to go very far if developers are forced to revert to printf debugging to build Cocoa apps. I don't mind if the debugger doesn't have slick XCode integration like GDB. But there needs to be SOME way to debug a Cocoa app or else the sensible path for developer productivity on the Mac will be Objective C 2.0 instead of MacRuby. Sacrificing any hope of using a debugger to gain relatively minor syntactic improvements is not a tradeoff that makes any sense. I don't intend to disparage MacRuby, I just want to share my perspective as both a professional Rubyist and a professional Cocoa developer. MacRuby is an amazing technology, but to gain traction as a realistic way to build Cocoa apps it will really need a debugger that works with Cocoa apps. -- Ryan

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allowedFileTypes and NSOpenPanel
by Gregoire LEJEUNE 22 Nov '10

22 Nov '10

Hi, I try to use setAllowedFileTypes with an NSOpenPanel using this code : panel = NSOpenPanel.openPanel() panel.canChooseFiles = true panel.allowedFileTypes = ["graphml", "gml", "xml"] result = panel.runModal() But it doesn't work. I can chose any type of file. If I use the (10.6) deprecated runModalWithTypes, it works... So is it me or setAllowedFileTypes which's buggy ? Thanks for your help. Greg

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calling Objective-C method with block parameter
by Alan Skipp 22 Nov '10

22 Nov '10

Hello everyone, I'm attempting to call a method on an Objective-C object which takes a block as its parameter, but I'm not having much luck. I can happily create the object in Macruby and send the message with a Proc. The NSLog call within the Objective-C method body succeeds, but the 'block()' doesn't. Am I doing something obviously wrong here? (I'm using a nightly build from sometime last week). This is the Objective-C method: - (void)callBlock:(void (^)())block; { NSLog(@"block: %@", block); block(); } Here is the ruby code: b = TestBlock.new b.callBlock( Proc.new { puts "hello" } ) The output is as follows: block: #<Proc:0x2005c9b80> Program received signal: “EXC_BAD_ACCESS”.

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Future MacRuby support for "name-mangling" ?
by Scott Lowe 22 Nov '10

22 Nov '10

Hello, Both JRuby and IronRuby support translation from 'native' CamelCase method names to the lowercase_with_underscores naming convention in idiomatic Ruby. They IronRuby guys call this "name-mangling": http://ironruby.net/Documentation/.NET/Names I had an expectation that this would be the case with MacRuby, but I now know that this is not true. Are there any plans to implement this feature in the future? You can probably guess that I like this feature an awful lot. Regards, Scott

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Objective-c Class -> methods
by András Zalavári 21 Nov '10

21 Nov '10

Hi there! I'm having problems of getting a list of methods from Classes, declared in Objective-C. I have a class compiled, and fully working, look like this: // Vector.h @interface Vector : NSObject { float x,y,z; } @property float x,y,z; @property float length; @end // Vector.m @implementation Vector @synthesize x,y,z; -(Vector*)vectorByAdd:(Vector*)vector{ Vector* newVector=[[Vector new] autorelease]; newVector.x=self.x+vector.x; newVector.y=self.y+vector.y; newVector.z=self.z+vector.z; return newVector; } [...] @end when I call the ruby method :methods on a Vector, it returns the methods of an Object class, and I cant get neither the accesors of the x,y,z property, nor the other methods appears Once I read something about how to get the obj-c methods, but I couldn-t find it.

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A little NSStatusBar app - Gmail Notifr
by James Chen 19 Nov '10

19 Nov '10

Hi guys, Gmail Notifr was originally written in RubyCocoa, which runs as a little NSStatusBar app and checks your gmail feeds at specified intervals. I started updating it to MacRuby last month. Most changes were just simply updating method_arg1_arg2 to method(arg1:arg2). Since this app saves account/password in Keychain, I also extracted the keychain access code to a separate project. Still have some difficulties on Security.framework's C methods. I also need to make the growl notification work later. I know many guys are interested in how to make menu bar (NSStatusBar) application so I guess this in progress project might help a little. The project repository is: https://github.com/ashchan/gmail-notifr , and the keychain access wrapper project is here: https://github.com/ashchan/macruby-keychain-wrapper . Regarding the C methods calling, the keychain wrapper has to access this API: SecKeychainItemModifyAttributesAndData It would be really great if anyone knows how to construct SecKeychainAttributeList and other necessary parameters for this API and offers some help. --- James Chen ashchan.com | @ashchan <http://twitter.com/ashchan>

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Weird behaviour for a weird line of code
by Mark Rada 19 Nov '10

19 Nov '10

Hey, I wrote a line of code that I thought was correct (but maybe not so pretty) and in one case it was giving me a weird error. I was wondering if someone could explain to me what is wrong with it; I suspect there is some behaviour of MacRuby that I am not understanding. Here are a few examples that are close to what I had: A working case: (Case #1) require 'uri' test = URI.parse url unless (url = nil).nil? # works, as I expected, url is nil and the left side is not evaluated Ok, try again, but without a nil value for url: (Case #2) require 'uri' test = URI.parse url unless (url = 'http://macruby.org/').nil? # error about url not being defined Now, when I try this out in macirb: (Case #3) require 'uri' test = URI.parse url unless (url = 'http://macruby.org/').nil? # error again test = URI.parse url unless (url = 'http://wikipedia.org/').nil? # works fine this time puts test.to_s # gives me the wikipedia value If it doesn't work in the second case, why does it start working in the third case? Thanks, Mark

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Weird xcode / macruby differences
by Ashley Towns 17 Nov '10

17 Nov '10

Hey would anyone be able to fill me in on whats going wrong here (or how to find out more on whats up) ~ ∴ macgem list --local *** LOCAL GEMS *** rake (0.8.7) sqlite3-ruby (1.3.2) ~ ∴ macruby -e "require 'rubygems'; require 'sqlite3'; p $:" ["/Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/macruby-0.7.1/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.3.2/bin", "/Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/macruby-0.7.1/gems/sqlite3-ruby-1.3.2/lib", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2", "/Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0", "."] rubygems has pulled in the correct gem. now on xcode: puts $: require 'rubygems' puts $: require 'sqlite3' puts $: 2010-11-17 14:52:28.651 sqlitebrowser[78482:a0f] +[NSATSGlyphGenerator initialize] invocation. The class is deprecated. /Users/ashleyis/Documents/Projects/sqlitebrowser/build/Debug/sqlitebrowser.app/Contents/Resources /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 . /Users/ashleyis/Documents/Projects/sqlitebrowser/build/Debug/sqlitebrowser.app/Contents/Resources /Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/bundler08-0.8.5/bin /Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/bundler08-0.8.5/lib /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2 /Library/Frameworks/MacRuby.framework/Versions/0.7.1/usr/lib/ruby/1.9.2/universal-darwin10.0 . /Users/ashleyis/Documents/Projects/sqlitebrowser/build/Debug/sqlitebrowser.app/Contents/Resources/rb_main.rb:11:in `<main>': dlopen(/Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/ffi-0.6.3/lib/ffi_c.bundle, 9): no suitable image found. Did find: /Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/ffi-0.6.3/lib/ffi_c.bundle: mach-o, but wrong architecture - /Users/ashleyis/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/ffi-0.6.3/lib/ffi_c.bundle (LoadError) it seems to be pulling from my 1.9.2-p0 gems folder instead of macruby-0.7.1 (and grabbing bundler)

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Neat MacRuby app, HotCocoa, and more!
by Leigh Caplan 15 Nov '10

15 Nov '10

Hey everybody, I wanted to say hi to the list and introduce myself - I've been lurking for awhile and come by when I need help, but RubyConf has me all fired up, so I'd like to start engaging more with the community. My name is Leigh Caplan, and I'm a developer in Seattle, WA. I like long walks on the beach, dinner by candlelight, and not having to write my Mac OS X apps in Objective C. First, I wanted to tell everyone about a potentially useful menu extra that I created called CobraMenu. It's meant to be a simple "traffic light" for CI Joe (the super simple/awesome CI server written by the Github guys). You can find more info at http://texel.github.com/CobraMenu/ or just clone/fork it from https://github.com/texel/CobraMenu Next, developing this got me thinking about HotCocoa, and how it could evolve into a really useful project in the future. I had a chat w/ Matt Aimonetti today, and he mentioned that Rich Kilmer, while still interested in the project, both didn't have time to maintain it and also wasn't convinced that its current goal as a DSL for creating UI elements was necessarily useful for anything but trivial projects. Apparently there's also been some discussion to this effect on this list, but I'm a bit late to the party, so I apologize. Now, I *can* see a need for a ruby-like DSL for Cocoa, but in my opinion, it would be much more exciting if we endeavored to wrap other Cocoa classes and idioms in a loving Ruby-like embrace. Here's a rudimentary example (very much like something I've done in CobraMenu): HotCocoa::URLConnection.get('http://google.com') do |c| c.success { success_callback } c.failure { failure_callback } c.error { |e| error_handler.call_something e } end I'd be interested to see if other people think this is a good idea. If so, I can formulate a strategy, and get to work :) Leigh

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Re: [MacRuby-devel] Future MacRuby support for "name-mangling" ?
by Scott Lowe 14 Nov '10

14 Nov '10

>* I'm not aware of the particulars of the IronRuby or JRuby bridges, but in the case of RubyCocoa, there is a translation step to get from a Ruby method name to an Objective-Cselector. In MacRuby, there is no transation step. MacRuby method names are Objective-C selectors and vice versa. So, we'd have to *add* a step in the method dispatch to do translation (since there isn't already one).* I believe that IronRuby presents a "view" onto the CLR objects, so yes, there is bound to be an intermediate step to facilitate this. Thanks for your time and your answers, gentlemen. Scott

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