• What’s Ruby

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and easy object-oriented programming. It has many features to process text files and to do system management tasks (as in Perl). It is simple, straight-forward, and extensible.

  • Features of Ruby

    + Simple Syntax + Normal Object-Oriented features(ex. class, method calls) + Advanced Object-Oriented features(ex. Mix-in, Singleton-method) + Operator Overloading + Exception Handling + Iterators and Closures + Garbage Collection + Dynamic Loading of Object files(on some architecture) + Highly Portable (works on many Unix-like/POSIX compatible platforms

    as well as Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS etc.)
cf. http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/wiki/ruby-19/SupportedPlatforms

  • How to get Ruby

The Ruby distribution files can be found in the following FTP site:

ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/

The trunk of the Ruby source tree can be checked out with the following command:

$ svn co http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/trunk/ ruby

There are some other branches under development. Try the following command and see the list of branches:

$ svn ls http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/branches/

  • Ruby home-page

The URL of the Ruby home-page is:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/

  • Mailing list

There is a mailing list to talk about Ruby. To subscribe this list, please send the following phrase

subscribe YourFirstName YourFamilyName e.g.

subscribe Joseph Smith

in the mail body (not subject) to the address <[email protected]>.

  • How to compile and install

This is what you need to do to compile and install Ruby:

1. If ./configure does not exist or is older than configure.in,
   run autoconf to (re)generate configure.

2. Run ./configure, which will generate config.h and Makefile.

   Some C compiler flags may be added by default depending on your
   environment.  Specify optflags=.. and warnflags=.. as necessary
   to override them.

3. Edit defines.h if you need.  Usually this step will not be needed.

4. Remove comment mark(#) before the module names from ext/Setup (or
   add module names if not present), if you want to link modules
   statically.

   If you don't want to compile non static extension modules
   (probably on architectures which does not allow dynamic loading),
   remove comment mark from the line "#option nodynamic" in
   ext/Setup.

5. Run make.

6. Optionally, run 'make test' to check whether the compiled Ruby
   interpreter works well.  If you see the message "test succeeded",
   your ruby works as it should (hopefully).

7. Run 'make install'

   This command will create following directories and install files
   onto them.

     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/bin
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/include/ruby-${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/include/ruby-${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}/${PLATFORM}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}/${PLATFORM}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/site_ruby
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/site_ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/site_ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}/${PLATFORM}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}/${PLATFORM}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/lib/ruby/gems/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/share/man/man1
     * ${DESTDIR}${prefix}/share/ri/${MAJOR}.${MINOR}.${TEENY}/system

   If Ruby's API version is `x.y.z', the ((|${MAJOR}|)) is `x', the
   ((|${MINOR}|)) is `y', and the ((|${TEENY}|)) is `z'.

   NOTE: teeny of the API version may be different from one of
   Ruby's program version

   You may have to be a super user to install ruby.

If you fail to compile ruby, please send the detailed error report with the error log and machine/OS type, to help others.

DO NOT LINK Ruby WITH A LIBRARY WHOSE LICENSE IS NOT COMPATIBLE WITH Ruby License (see COPYING). For example, currently you cannot link with readline6, which is under GPLv3.

  • Copying

See the file COPYING.

  • The Author

Feel free to send comments and bug reports to the author. Here is the author’s latest mail address:

matz@netlab.jp

created at: Thu Aug 3 11:57:36 JST 1995 Local variables: mode: indented-text end: