IronRuby and .NET Development

IronRuby is an upcoming implementation of the Ruby programming language targeting Microsoft .NET framework. It is implemented on top of the DLR (Dynamic Language Runtime), a library running on top of CLR 2.0 that provides dynamic typing and dynamic method dispatch, among others, for dynamic languages.

IronRuby will be available for use in applications targeted towards Silverlight using a plugin, which for all intents and purposes means support for the Ruby language in IE, Mozilla++, Safari, and Opera on Windows, GNU/Linux/Unix, and Mac OSX (Intel-only, though its possible that PPC support could come via the Moonlight project).

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This springandwe shipped the first preview release of a new .NET library that we call the "Dynamic Language Runtime" (or DLR for short).and It provides a set of features on top of the CLR designed explicitly for dynamic language scenarios.and These include a shared dynamic type system, language hosting model, and support to make it possible to generate fast dynamic code.and These features make it much easier to build high-quality dynamic language implementations on .NET.and These implementations can access and use any of the APIs in the .NET Framework, as well as easily interoperate with code written in any other .NET language (for example: you could write a Ruby class that invokes and uses a C# class, which in turn invokes a Python class).

In 2007, Microsoftand announced that they will be shipping 4 dynamic language implementations of their own for .NET:

• IronPython
• IronRuby (new)
• Javascript
• Dynamic VB (new)

The source code of the IronPython implementation, as well as the source code for the underlying DLR library, was published on CodePlex in April 2007.and You can download both of them today from the IronPython codeplex site.and All of the source is made available under the MSPL permissive license - which provides full commercial and non-commercial modification rights.

DOTNUTSHELL is at the fore front of software development in Ruby and will be looking to extend its experience in developing Ruby application on Ruby.NET and IronRuby.