[MacRuby-devel] 3 Questions, One about language restriction, one about platform targeting and the final about the standard library.

[Anthony Buck]

Hi all,
    I have a couple of questions which I have attempted to answer to
no-avail. I was wondering if anyone could point me in the right
direction (Quite new to OS X development so my apologies if it is
mealy my incompetence that has lead me here.)

1)  I am looking into using MacRuby and am interested in it's ability
to AOT compile ruby code down to an executable. I am wondering though
whether this places a restriction on the code in any way? Is there a
subset of ruby which is supported or can i go ahead and perform all
the meta-magic i want and still have the code AOT compiled?

2)  I am also interested in targeting both 10.6 and 10.5 with any
applications developed (at 50%+ OS X share it is imposable to ignore
with any conscience.) I have looked at the deployment task shipped
with Mac Ruby and love the fact that I can have a simple .app to pass
on to my users however, am i right in thinking that this .app will
only operate on 10.6 machines? If so is there any way to develop
either a combined or separate .app which is useful to users of 10.5?
Is this possible when the development system is 10.6?

3) I also read an article about how the developer of Stopwatch*
packaged said application without the "standard library." am I right
in thinking that this is the ruby standard library which was left
unpackaged? Wouldn't this render the application un-runnable?

Any advice on any of the 3 questions is much appreciated.

Regards,

Anthony Buck


* http://isaac.kearse.co.nz/2010/01/31/stopwatch/