First IronRuby preview

Tomorrow I'll be presenting IronRuby at RubyEnRails 2006. As a result I am making available a preview of the current version. With this preview I'd like to share the progress I've made over the past few months and get some early feedback. Please note that I focused my efforts mainly on the CLR integration - much more than porting the Ruby base class library. In other words, it's far from done.

To get started with this preview you should first get the bits. They currently only include the binaries and a few Ruby scripts to get you started. In a later stadium I will make sure to include the source as well.

Once you have the bits you’ll want to run irb.exe, the interactive Ruby console. To start playing with .NET, reference an assembly like this:

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reference "mscorlib"

You should now be able to use the imported types as if they were Ruby classes:

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r = System::Random.new
r.Next()

# import a namespace and use a generic type List<T>
include System::Collections::Generic
myList = GenericList.of(String).new
myList("Hello")

You can also do something slightly more interesting such as deriving from a .NET type:

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class MyRandom < System::Random
	def Sample()
		0.5
	end
end

mr = MyRandom.new
mr.Next(0, 100)

Or you could implement an interface:

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class MyType
	implements System::IDisposable

	def initialize(name)
		@name = name
	end

	def Dispose()
		puts "Disposed " + @name
	end
end

myList = GenericList.of(System::IDisposable).new
myList.Add MyType.new("Wilco")
myList[0].Dispose

Ofcourse, there are more interesting things than this to play with. If you happen to have the WinFX February CTP installed, you can get started by including the 'wpf.rb' script. This does some bootstrapping that is required by IronRuby. Here’s what a hello world window in WPF may look like:

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require "wpf.rb"

w = Window.new
w.Show
w.SizeToContent = SizeToContent::WidthAndHeight
w.Content = "Hello, world!"

Or you could put together a fancy looking media player:

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require "mediaplayer/player.rb"
require "wpfextensions.rb" # load some helper methods

# set up reflection
@w.Content.FindName("Reflection").Fill = 
    VisualBrush.new @w.Content.FindName("MainGrid")

me = @w.Content.FindName("Player")

# setup auto replay
me.MediaEnded += proc { |sender, e| me.Clock.Controller.Begin }

me.load "c:\\WINDOWS\\system32\\oobe\\images\\intro.wmv"

So much for a few examples to get you started...

I’d love to hear from you. What do you think of the current release? Which things would you like to see first next? All feedback is welcome.