I’m attending the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) Global Summit in Seattle this week (I’m a Windows Mobile - Mobile Devices MVP). IronRuby was not on the Open Spaces meeting agenda this afternoon, so John Lam staged an impromptu meetup for people interested in talking about IronRuby. John is 4th from the right in the photo. And Jimmy Schementi (Program Manager - Dynamic Language Runtime) is 2nd from the left.
I found the nearly two hour long session very interesting even though, as I explained to John and Jimmy, I’m one of the people too lazy to build IronRuby from source (I compile nearly everything from source for Linux but nothing for Windows) and am waiting for the installable binaries.
John will talk about IronRuby on Rails at the upcoming RubyConf.
Or, you could use JRuby 1.1 today. JRuby has been able to run Rails for at least 6 months. And both Oracle and Sun have deployed production sites on JRuby. Netbeans 6.0.1 includes full Ruby and Rails support.
JRuby is also great for distributing ready-to-run software. Check out Mingle. Not only is it a great tool for managing agile software development, it is run within JRuby.
I wonder if IronRuby is just a spoiler in the Ruby VM war?
Running Rails using IronRuby is more like a compatibility test. I don't think any expects people already running Rails/Mongrel/Apache on Linux to switch to Windows/IIS/IronRuby. However, if a person comfortable with Windows Server and .Net is interested in Rails or other Ruby-based apps or development, IronRuby would probably be of interest to that person.