[MacRuby-devel] Contributions (Was: Experimental branch status)

[Martin Hess]

Is there a list of which C extensions need to be moved FFI?

On May 29, 2009, at 3:31 PM, Laurent Sansonetti wrote:

> So, to recap, I think the following contributions will be welcome:
>
> - Maintaining the website (blog, content, etc.) and writing  
> tutorials. There are lots of very interesting blog posts around that  
> could I think be transformed into a tutorial or into a recipe  
> (shorter tutorial). I think we need more recipes, for instance how  
> to embed MacRuby in your app, how to use a specific and complex  
> Cocoa class (NSOutlineView/NSTableView/etc.) in Ruby, etc.
>
> - Writing / translating sample code for MacRuby. We will bundle it  
> in the MacRuby distribution. If you wrote anything interesting in  
> MacRuby that could be used as a sample code, let us now. Creating  
> new sample code is cool, but porting an existing Objective-C sample  
> code is good too.
>
> - Specs: working on the 1.8 -> 1.9 rubyspec transition (see Eloy's  
> message above). Eloy is currently doing all the specs maintenance as  
> well and I think he will not be against help :) Also, we recently  
> started writing MacRuby-specific specs, they need to be extended.  
> Finally, we need to start working on passing the core specs (we only  
> did language so far).
>
> - Porting C extensions to the Ruby FFI API. We started working on a  
> compatible Ruby FFI API, we still have a plan to support C  
> extensions but not in the very near future and the performance will  
> not be great, FFI will be faster. Also if most of the well-known C  
> extensions have been ported, we might simply decide to not support C  
> extensions, which is one less thing to do. Also, working on Ruby FFI- 
> compatible libraries will make JRuby / Rubinius / etc. users happy :)
>
> - HotCocoa: I will leave this part to Rich and Matt, but I think  
> they will be mostly interested in mappings. Try to create a HotCocoa  
> app, then contribute mappings for things that do not exist (or  
> improve the existing ones by contributing custom methods, etc.).
>
> - Core: there are lots of things to do, if you feel hacking on the  
> low-level bits. We maintain a TODO file which contains a few things  
> that still need to be done. At this point, the JIT compiler is  
> almost finished (AOT is maybe finished at 10%, though) and the VM is  
> still under development. A good way to start hacking is to run the  
> test_vm.rb test suite, pick a failing test and try to fix it.  
> Contributing new failing tests is also highly welcome, you can  
> simply use the miniruby executable and try to make it crash (it's  
> not hard, you will see).
>
> - ... anything more? :)
>
> Laurent
>
> On May 29, 2009, at 6:57 AM, Eloy Duran wrote:
>
>> I haven't actively spoken about this with Laurent over the last  
>> week, but afaik not much changed since last time, which means that  
>> the support is not nearly far enough to start using it. We decided  
>> that we want the FFI specs in the repo in order to finish this work  
>> appropriately, which would need work to be converted from RSpec to  
>> MSpec.
>>
>> Luckily Brian Ford (from the rubyspec project) was already planning  
>> on incorporating them. I haven't had time to check if they're in  
>> yet. So this is another area where people could help out. By  
>> porting the ruby-ffi specs to mspec and integrating them into the  
>> rubyspec.
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Eloy
>>
>> On May 29, 2009, at 1:28 PM, Chuck Remes wrote:
>>
>>> How is progress on support FFI? That seems to be the new ruby-way  
>>> for interfacing to native code supported by JRuby, Rubinius and to  
>>> some extent the 1.9.x codeline. With FFI built in, as gems are  
>>> updated to support the other ruby interpreters and/or compilers  
>>> then MacRuby would be supported for "free" through those efforts.
>>>
>>> cr
>>>
>>> On May 28, 2009, at 11:42 PM, Matt Aimonetti wrote:
>>>
>>>> The other thing that needs to be done is to port/fix the popular  
>>>> Ruby gems which don't work on MacRuby yet. Also, writing wrappers  
>>>> for common obj-c libraries/frameworks would be very useful.
>>>>
>>>> If you are interested in writing tutorials/articles, feel free to  
>>>> contact me offline so I can show you how to use our blog engine  
>>>> tool. (I think Rich is planning on releasing a tutorial on how to  
>>>> do that, but that might not happen right away)
>>>>
>>>> - Matt
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>>
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