Installable Mac Application

ruby-talk
1

Hi

I have a ruby (1.8.7) program that takes a config file and uses appscript to
process files.
I run the program from the command line, but I want to give the app to a
friend and I don't think they will be able to use the command line
successfully, or edit the config file manually.

I imagine a simple GUI would suffice as a control panel to edit the config
file and launch the program.

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI on
the Mac? My install would need to include all the necessary gems to run the
app.

···

--
Jim Freeze

2

I wrote such a thing back for Mac OS7-9 back in the day. It was called DropUNIX and I'm sure the code floats around still. It targeted C, but the idea is the same.

These days I'd prolly use macruby. IIRC, you can package macruby apps as fully bundled apps.

···

On Jan 20, 2011, at 20:33 , Jim Freeze wrote:

Hi

I have a ruby (1.8.7) program that takes a config file and uses appscript to
process files.
I run the program from the command line, but I want to give the app to a
friend and I don't think they will be able to use the command line
successfully, or edit the config file manually.

I imagine a simple GUI would suffice as a control panel to edit the config
file and launch the program.

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI on
the Mac? My install would need to include all the necessary gems to run the
app.

3

Jim Freeze <jimfreeze@gmail.com> writes:

Is there a process for creating an installable ruby app that has a GUI on
the Mac?

RubyCocoa:

  <http://rubycocoa.sourceforge.net>

sherm--

···

--
Sherm Pendley
                                   <http://camelbones.sourceforge.net>
Cocoa Developer

4

Hi

You're asking Mac specific questions which ruby-talk typically won't
address. You can ask the MacRuby list and will get a more knowledgeable
response...

http://www.macruby.org/contact-us.html

I'm interested more in packaging really. I don't want to use MacRuby. It's
pure ruby, on a mac, but I can't ask the user to install any gems. A crude
solution would be to provide a link to a shell script that launched a
sinatra app and then did 'open localhost:3000/myapp', but I don't think that
would be the best way to do this.

I know Xcode can create GUI front ends for terminal applications. This
book discusses it...

Advanced Mac OS X Programming<http://www.amazon.com/Advanced-Mac-Programming-Core-Unix/dp/0974078514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1250177988&sr=1-1&gt;

I'll check this out.

Also, GUI installations for Mac are made with PackageMaker<Documentation Archive;
.

Thanks for the link.

···

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:56 PM, Jose Hales-Garcia < jose.halesgarcia@stat.ucla.edu> wrote:

--
Jim Freeze

5

MacRuby is the best way to handle packaging of applications on a Mac. This
is a topic that's particularly important to me, and trust me, they've got it
right.

You don't need to ask your user to install anything: it bundles not only
your gems but also the ruby interpreter directly inside of the .app, so they
need it and only it.

At this point, RubyCocoa is all but deprecated, as it's what turned into
MacRuby, IIRC.

But seriously: use MacRuby. Hopefully, when the packaging gets a bit better,
I'll be able to recommend Shoes as well. Packaging is a weak point at the
moment, though.