[MacRuby-devel] MacRuby on Mavericks (or go to RubyMotion?)

[rob ista]

Hi all, I went to RubyMotion about 10 days ago and I must admit it made me happy (after some struggles :) … the migration is actually not that difficult: just install the IB gem, replace the attr-accessors to the use of the gem, dump the rb files in the app-folder and the rest in the resources-folder, RAKE, and there you go !!! :))) … 

… well, actually it caused some pain. The variable type handling is a little more strict so obviously my sloppy work caused troubles after all. As an example, obviously the GC in MacRuby was not perfect so a reference to a variable that should have been already erased worked in MacRuby but will not work in RubyMotion. type changes are more tough but you should do that anyway. :) . Well, a good opportunity to clean up your code :))) … Also Mavericks is not that stable yet and is also more strict with calls. So sometimes you just have to take another route. Further more the error reporting is not always that clear … Cleaning up that code without knowing what was wrong at first kept me from sleeping a while because very very often you just get crash-reports with a lot of %$^#%. Sometimes I just had to put a “puts “break here !!!"” line by line to find out where the crash came from. Working like this sometimes looked like the 70’s were you would get an inch thick memory dump after a programming error :) … 

… The lack of Xcode integration is a matter of taste. I think its a step backwards because we are developing for IOS or OSX anyway so why abandon the Apple stuff ? but fortunately the IB gem at least makes NIB’s accessible so no hard coding of windows (unless you want to).

It will take me another week or so to get an app ready for the store again but I am already happy I can use it myself again … it’s all a bit back to basic again but hey, we’re explorers anyway living on the edge of software engineering of today :) … 

… finally i’d like to say that Laurent and his team are really on top of it and don’t seem to sleep to deliver proper progress and support. Thanks guys !!! 

… well, for me MacRuby is dead, long live RubyMotion :)))

cheers, Rob





On 07 Nov 2013, at 03:00, macruby-devel-request at lists.macosforge.org wrote:

> 
> Today's Topics:
> 
>   1. Re: MacRuby on Mavericks (rob ista)
>   2. Re: MacRuby on Mavericks (Robert Carl Rice)
> 
> 
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 06 Nov 2013 22:27:42 +0100
> From: rob ista <rob.ista at me.com>
> To: macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org
> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] MacRuby on Mavericks
> Message-ID: <E00CB811-65F3-4B93-A0FC-4C2158D9B1F2 at me.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
> 
> Hi All, 
> 
> indeed the GC is still there on Mavericks and needs to be ?required? in Xcode while disabling ARC to avoid a conflict (thanks Steve). So far so good. I guess I had too many probe at the same time :). The malfunctioning again of the IB in Xcode5 with the outlets can be solved with the earlier published workaround of an accompanying ObjC Class.h file next to the MacRuby Class.rb file.  It?s a bit additional work to create and maintain but we?re talking about a few minutes here so that should not be a problem unless you have to maintain many many classes with outlets. Obviously the rb-nibtool is not called or not working anymore even when properly installed.
> 
> What is a bigger problem is that not all objects seem to be created at run-time resulting in no-method errors (e.g. with gems) and sometimes not connected outlets in delegate classes or unresolved IB-action methods. Pretty weird. The same sources compile and run fine on SL-L-ML . For me it?s difficult to trace why and where this happens so hopefully an expert can shine a light on this. Very simple apps run fine, bigger ones with just more classes and stuff crash. 
> 
> I am moving back to ML and keep may be a little "play machine? on a separate disk with Mavericks. I am tooooo happy with my MacRuby apps :) ? May be moving to RubyMotion after all. I will test it at least soon. Laurent deserves the support and its not that much money :).  
> 
> cheers, Rob  
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> ------------------------------
> 
> Message: 2
> Date: Wed, 6 Nov 2013 21:00:02 -0500
> From: Robert Carl Rice <rice.audio at pobox.com>
> To: "MacRuby development discussions."
> 	<macruby-devel at lists.macosforge.org>
> Subject: Re: [MacRuby-devel] MacRuby on Mavericks
> Message-ID: <8579B5DD-9D34-41DD-9CEF-2E41532F09CE at pobox.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=windows-1252
> 
> Hi Rob,
> 
> Thanks for looking into this.
> 
> The iTunes Store has notified me that my current binaries will be removed from the store for not being compatible with the current OS release. Recoding for either RubyMotion or Objective-C will be a big job and I'm not looking forward to it.
> 
> PS; the new Xcode renews the warning that Xcode 5 is scheduled to be the last Xcode version to support GC, but I don't see anything that ties version 6 to a scheduled OS update.
> 
> Bob Rice
> 
> 
> On Nov 6, 2013, at 4:27 PM, rob ista <rob.ista at me.com> wrote:
> 
>> Hi All, 
>> 
>> indeed the GC is still there on Mavericks and needs to be ?required? in Xcode while disabling ARC to avoid a conflict (thanks Steve). So far so good. I guess I had too many probe at the same time :). The malfunctioning again of the IB in Xcode5 with the outlets can be solved with the earlier published workaround of an accompanying ObjC Class.h file next to the MacRuby Class.rb file.  It?s a bit additional work to create and maintain but we?re talking about a few minutes here so that should not be a problem unless you have to maintain many many classes with outlets. Obviously the rb-nibtool is not called or not working anymore even when properly installed.
>> 
>> What is a bigger problem is that not all objects seem to be created at run-time resulting in no-method errors (e.g. with gems) and sometimes not connected outlets in delegate classes or unresolved IB-action methods. Pretty weird. The same sources compile and run fine on SL-L-ML . For me it?s difficult to trace why and where this happens so hopefully an expert can shine a light on this. Very simple apps run fine, bigger ones with just more classes and stuff crash. 
>> 
>> I am moving back to ML and keep may be a little "play machine? on a separate disk with Mavericks. I am tooooo happy with my MacRuby apps :) ? May be moving to RubyMotion after all. I will test it at least soon. Laurent deserves the support and its not that much money :).  
>> 
>> cheers, Rob  
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> On 05 Nov 2013, at 19:55, macruby-devel-request at lists.macosforge.org wrote:
>> 
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>>> Today's Topics:
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>>> 1. MacRuby on Mavericks (Robert Carl Rice)
>>> 2. Re: MacRuby on Mavericks (Mark Villacampa)
>>> 3. Re: MacRuby on Mavericks (Robert Carl Rice)
>>> 4. Re: MacRuby on Mavericks (Stephen Horne)
>>> 
>>>