[MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

Fri Apr 6 01:34:15 PDT 2012

Hello Matt,

for me I can tell the story about losing interests in MacRuby and stopping to use it began with rejecting feature suggestions/requests here on the mailing list. For example the automated snake_case to humbleCase and vise versa conversion. Just by the saying 'JRuby does it to so why not MacRuby as well?' feature request got ignored and rejected.

The second next show stopper for me was and still is to be forced to use Xcode. I wonder how people can be productive with Xcode but somehow they manage to be it. I couldn't so I have no chance to get comfortable with MacRuby. I pretty much love tools like Sublime Text2 and the ZSH or RubyMine but all these tools become pretty much useless for every MacRuby related project. Just my thought here!

The third and last thing on my list of 'why I stopped using MacRuby' is - For me MacRuby looks just like an Cocoa wrapper with Ruby'ish syntax but I think MacRuby should be real Ruby interpreter implementation with Gem's allowing to connect to Apple frameworks API's like Cocoa. Using MacRuby with RVM or rbenv is like pain in the ass. Gem handling of MacRuby feels not like Gem handling in other rubies.

These are my 3 points why I stopped using MacRuby and thanks to your posting my hope awakes again that sometimes in the future developing apps for OSX is not a craftsmanship anymore but fun!

--Denny 

________________________________
 Von: Matt Aimonetti <mattaimonetti at gmail.com>
An: MacRuby development discussions. <macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org> 
Gesendet: 0:06 Freitag, 6.April 2012
Betreff: [MacRuby-devel] The future of MacRuby

Many of you have been wondering what is going on with the MacRuby project given the lack of up-to-date releases and overall communication.
I feel we owe you some explanation.

As a lot of you have noticed, our de-facto project leader Laurent Sansonetti has been M.I.A since October 2011, his last post to this mailing list being
http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2011-October/008168.htmlannouncing MacRuby 0.11 really soon.
His last commit was a change of license back in October: https://github.com/MacRuby/MacRuby/commit/ac2a7a8e678d19e44d3c64a9508a8370d082dca2

Laurent is fine. As described on his twitter http://twitter.com/lrzand LinkedIn http://www.linkedin.com/in/sansonettiaccounts, Laurent is no longer with Apple and is clearly also no longer directly involved with the MacRuby project on a day-to-day basis.
Laurent is currently busy with another project and and hopes to someday be able to contribute to the MacRuby project again.

While no one on this list can speak for Apple, and Apple as a company does not tend to comment on its future plans or intentions, I think it's reasonable to imagine that Apple would be more than happy to have the MacRuby project decide for itself what its destiny is and how to achieve it.  If they did not want the community to be involved or drive such a process, they would not have released MacRuby as open source or created the project infrastructure to facilitate it.   It is time for us to stop looking to Apple to provide guidance, leadership and coding for the project, in other words, and take on those challenges for ourselves!   MacRuby is already very powerful and comparatively stable as a development platform, now it's time for us to take things to the next level.

I personally think it will finally allow us to communicate and collaborate on the actual process of development as it occurs, rather than the previous practice of simply seeing code appear from some hidden, internal branch which was driven almost exclusively by a single person

Doing all of this in the open should lead to far more people being interested in the project, not just as users but as developers and leaders.  No one rushes to fill a position that is occupied by someone else, but now we have a vacuum to fill, and that can be a good thing in terms of encouraging more people to step forward.

Here is how I see things and I would love to hear more about what you guys think.
MacRuby is a great project, but: 
	* the target audience & projects aren't clear
	* the target platform (OS X) isn't the one we all really want to target (iOS)
	* Cocoa's API is awesome but not user friendly/easy to grasp
What I'd like to suggest is the following:

1. Define clear goals for MacRuby that we can easily evaluate:
	* Focus primarily on making MacRuby the tool to use for quickly prototyping OS X and iOS applications.
	* Remove dependency on libauto so MacRuby can run post Mountain Lion and on iOS.2. Increase the number of contributors:
	* Define areas of contribution:
	* implementation itself (mainly requires C, C++ knowledge)
	* prototyping focus (templates, wrapper APIs, modules, tools: a full ecosystem aimed at being more productive)
	* documentation (getting started, guides, FAQs, wiki, demos, hacker guides)
	* support
	* empower contributors:
	* move the website to github for easier contribution
	* better release process and roadmap
	* better process to review pull requests & give commit rights3. Improve communication:
	* start an active and official chat room (IRC, campfire like or something else)
	* open discussions about plans for the project and progress made
	* better collaboration with other Ruby implementation teams (Rubinius, JRuby, MagLev and of course Matz/C Ruby)
Let's not forget that MacRuby is and will remain a free Open Source project and that means we need your help and support. 
Without you, this project doesn't mean much so please voice your opinion and if you decide to do so, become an active participant to MacRuby's success.

I would like to thank Apple for their historical support and Laurent for starting this project and all his work so far. Without those contributions, MacRuby would never have existed and the project will more than welcome any future participation by either Apple or Laurent.
At the same time, I don't think the future of this project can or should rest on the shoulders of a single corporate entity, or that of a single individual.  That does not encourage the kind of broad participation, or the kind of overall longevity (in the form of future generations of contributors) that Open Source projects really need to survive over the long term.
Finally, I'd like to make clear that I see myself more in a role of a facilitator than a technical leader on the order of what Laurent was. This role has been left vacant for more than 6 months now and needs to be filled by a group of people with greater technical skills than mine. Additional contributors are therefore more than welcome to join the team, and their support will be as much appreciated as it is needed.

Finally, in addition to the already numerous great MacRuby contributors and soon to become contributors, Evan Phoenix (Rubinius) agreed to act as an advisor for the project.

So, MacRuby community what do you think?

- Matt
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