Native gem roundup!

ruby-talk
21

$ cd /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/; find . -name '*.so'
./json-1.1.3/ext/json/ext/parser/parser.so
./json-1.1.3/ext/json/ext/generator/generator.so
./json-1.1.3/ext/json/ext/parser.so
./json-1.1.3/ext/json/ext/generator.so

Do people generally use the native json gem for performance reasons?
Does a pure-ruby version not cut it? Are there benchmarks?

I only use it by default, because there are other gems which have
dependencies on "json" rather than "json_pure". e.g.

$ gem dependency couchrest
Gem couchrest-0.12.4
  json (>= 1.1.2, runtime)
  rest-client (>= 0.5, runtime)
  mime-types (>= 1.15, runtime)

Regards,

Brian.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

22

The documentation for the gems says:

# == Speed Comparisons

···

On Feb 3, 2009, at 3:22 AM, Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:

Do people generally use the native json gem for performance reasons? Does a pure-ruby version not cut it? Are there benchmarks?

#
# I have created some benchmark results (see the benchmarks subdir of the
# package) for the JSON-Parser to estimate the speed up in the C extension:
#
# JSON::Pure::Parser:: 28.90 calls/second
# JSON::Ext::Parser:: 505.50 calls/second

The reason I like the extension is that it gets you pretty close to Marshal's speed:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

require "benchmark"
require "yaml"

require "rubygems"
require "json"

TESTS = 10_000
DATA = {"fields" => [1, 2.0, true, false, nil]}

Benchmark.bmbm do |results|
   results.report("JSON:") { TESTS.times { JSON.parse(DATA.to_json) } }
   results.report("Marshal:") { TESTS.times { Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(DATA)) } }
   results.report("YAML:") { TESTS.times { YAML.load(DATA.to_yaml) } }
end
# >> Rehearsal --------------------------------------------
# >> JSON: 0.280000 0.030000 0.310000 ( 0.306849)
# >> Marshal: 0.230000 0.040000 0.270000 ( 0.267113)
# >> YAML: 5.090000 0.860000 5.950000 ( 5.975268)
# >> ----------------------------------- total: 6.530000sec
# >>
# >> user system total real
# >> JSON: 0.270000 0.030000 0.300000 ( 0.294798)
# >> Marshal: 0.230000 0.030000 0.260000 ( 0.264460)
# >> YAML: 5.090000 0.870000 5.960000 ( 5.965469)

With the pure version though, you are more like halfway between Marshal and YAML:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby -wKU

require "benchmark"
require "yaml"

require "rubygems"
require "json/pure"

TESTS = 10_000
DATA = {"fields" => [1, 2.0, true, false, nil]}

Benchmark.bmbm do |results|
   results.report("JSON (pure):") { TESTS.times { JSON.parse(DATA.to_json) } }
   results.report("Marshal:") { TESTS.times { Marshal.load(Marshal.dump(DATA)) } }
   results.report("YAML:") { TESTS.times { YAML.load(DATA.to_yaml) } }
end
# >> Rehearsal ------------------------------------------------
# >> JSON (pure): 2.780000 0.620000 3.400000 ( 3.409480)
# >> Marshal: 0.230000 0.040000 0.270000 ( 0.264554)
# >> YAML: 5.140000 0.880000 6.020000 ( 6.040840)
# >> --------------------------------------- total: 9.690000sec
# >>
# >> user system total real
# >> JSON (pure): 2.760000 0.630000 3.390000 ( 3.407148)
# >> Marshal: 0.230000 0.040000 0.270000 ( 0.264310)
# >> YAML: 5.130000 0.870000 6.000000 ( 6.004295)

James Edward Gray II

23

Charles Oliver Nutter writes:
> Coey Minear wrote:
> > As you may guess, this is a Rails application. FastCGI is used for
> > Apache deployment; ruby-postgres is for accessing the PostgreSQL
> > database. I know there are other options for Apache/web deployment
> > (e.g. Mongrel), but this install is stable and other priorities take
> > precedence over investigating alternative deployment configurations.
> > For PostgreSQL, even if I moved to ruby-pg, that is still a C library
> > wrapper.
> >
> > Anyways, just trying to answer your query.
>
> Cool, thanks. Are you using ruby-postgres through ActiveRecord itself or
> standalone in some way
>
> - Charlie
>

Just through ActiveRecord.

···

--
Coey Minear

24

I know you weren't asking me, but I'm using both ruby-postgres and the
pg library with AR, Sequel, and standalone.

Ben

···

On Tue, Feb 3, 2009 at 1:17 AM, Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@sun.com> wrote:

Cool, thanks. Are you using ruby-postgres through ActiveRecord itself or
standalone in some way

25

Charles Oliver Nutter wrote:

Tom Cloyd wrote:

As someone with a social survey research background, I want to advise you that this is an extremely poor way to get your question answered. If you're not serious about getting a good answer, your request is very close to list-noise. If you are, then you need a decent sample OR all the parametric data (i.e., don't sample it - get it all).

I disagree. I think the people most likely to respond to a mailing-list request are the exact people I'm looking to reach. Did it occur to you that perhaps I know there are download stats for all gems that I could mine? I'm looking to gauge the importance of gems to vocal mailing-list participants directly, by posting a general message here and seeing who responds. And I've gotten a lot of great responses, both on-list and off. If I wanted an accurate count of gem downloads (no doubt inflated by older gems including dev-time libraries as runtime dependencies) I certainly could get that. But people coming out and saying "I really need X" is far more interesting.

So please, others, feel free to reply with what X you find important.

And Tom, thanks for your input. What native extensions do you find useful?

- Charlie

Ah, Charlie, most interesting. Your population of interest isn't those who USE gems but those who talk/yell/gossip/whatever about them. Unusual notion, I'd say, but hey it's YOUR study, so to speak. I care not. Thanks for the clarification however. And no, I didn't assume you knew about about any download stats - I certainly didnt', but I supposed they might exist.

My favorite gems:

date ruby-debug readline strscan logger fileutils webby

by extension, if you'll excuse my putting it that way, I'd have to include all their dependencies, too...(e.g, rake, etc.)

Final thought: If you're interested in what people "really need", I cannot image a better measure of that than what they really USE. And that is NOT the same universe as what those who respond to your query happen to talk about. I still think you have a problem - if not a sampling problem, then a study design problem. Sorry, I'm a bit perverse about such things. I like to get it right, even with it isn't even my own question. Some people turn to God in times of trouble. I turn to statistics. Never could tell the difference, really. (heh heh)

t.

···

--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< tc@tomcloyd.com >> (email)
<< TomCloyd.com >> (website) << sleightmind.wordpress.com >> (mental health weblog)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

26

Julian Leviston wrote:

How would it be technically possible to do jruby cocoa If the machines
weren't macs?

Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

It wouldn't be, but, so? Who says you can't use JRuby on a Mac?

Perhaps you're following the MVC pattern, and the Model and perhaps
Controller are written using normal old ruby code (perhaps with some
java stuff thrown in), and then you create a distinct View for different
platforms. Of course, I'm sure you could use Swing or AWT or something
(I'm not too familiar with Java GUI frameworks)... it'd be a lot less
effort, but with OS X GUI applications, if the interface is not done in
Cocoa or Carbon, it usually sticks out like a sore thumb.

Again, I'm not particularly sure it'd be worth the effort involved, but
I'd certainly expect it to be possible. Most of the heavy lifting in
RubyCocoa is done with libffi anyway; it'd probably be possible to
switch it to ruby-ffi.

More likely, though, the RubyCocoa project will (eventually) disappear
entirely, replaced by MacRuby, which is pretty much to Objective-C what
JRuby is to Java.

···

On 05/02/2009, at 10:46 AM, Adam Gardner <adam.oddfellow@gmail.com>

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

27

Ryan Davis wrote:

Yeah. just depends on the impl's API into itself. ParseTree simply isn't necessary on rubinius.

I'm still interested in producing a PT-compatible sexp from JRuby's AST, but it becomes harder the more we customize that AST (and the more we pre-compile code and dump the memory-expensive AST).

The other stuff, though, we definitely need. Profiling, debugging (including into Java code, if necessary), code coverage. It's "interesting" to be reinventing all these tools again atop the JVM, but it's also frustrating that they weren't created language-agnostic by JVM advocates in the beginning.

Myopic idiots.

- Charlie

28

Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s| s.name }.sort

=> ["RedCloth", "amalgalite", "bcrypt-ruby", "concurrent", "curb",
"do_sqlite3", "ebb", "em_httpserver", "erlectricity", "eventmachine",
"eventmachine_httpserver", "fastthread", "fcgi", "ferret", "ffi",
"fxruby", "god", "hpricot", "json", "linecache", "memcached",
"mongrel", "mysql", "narray", "ncurses", "neuro", "nokogiri",
"oniguruma", "passenger", "raspell", "rbtree", "rcov", "rev", "rice",
"rmagick", "ruby-debug-base", "ruby-opengl", "ruby-postgres",
"ruby-prof", "rubygame", "rubynode", "sqlite3-ruby", "swiftiply",
"termios", "thin", "thin-turbo", "unicode", "zipruby"]

At this moment I have 307 installed gems (I like playing a lot with new things).

···

--
Pozdrawiam

Radosław Bułat
http://radarek.jogger.pl - mój blog

29

Of those, I believe only ruby-debug and webby are gems. The rest are standard libraries that ship with Ruby. Also, date, logger, fileutils, and webby are not the native extensions Charlie is looking for, since they don't involve C code.

James Edward Gray II

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 12:50 AM, Tom Cloyd wrote:

My favorite gems:

date ruby-debug readline strscan logger fileutils webby

30

Julian Leviston wrote:

How would it be technically possible to do jruby cocoa If the machines
weren't macs?

Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

It wouldn't be, but, so? Who says you can't use JRuby on a Mac?

I certainly use JRuby on Mac!
However, I think Julian is asking if his JRuby Cocoa app will run on things that aren't Macs. My thought is no. Cocoa would need to be running on the other platforms for that to work. My understanding is that Apple provides some Java libs that hook into Cocoa, which makes JRuby development possible.

Perhaps you're following the MVC pattern, and the Model and perhaps
Controller are written using normal old ruby code (perhaps with some
java stuff thrown in), and then you create a distinct View for different
platforms. Of course, I'm sure you could use Swing or AWT or something
(I'm not too familiar with Java GUI frameworks)... it'd be a lot less
effort, but with OS X GUI applications, if the interface is not done in
Cocoa or Carbon, it usually sticks out like a sore thumb.

Java Swing apps (including JRuby ones, like when you write a Monkeybars app - http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/\) by default on Macs will render components using the System Look and Feel, which under the hood will use the OS's native code to render buttons and other widgets. Check out an app like FrostWire (http://www.frostwire.com/ - Java) or JotBot (http://getjotbot.com/ - JRuby with Monkeybars)

SWT (not to be confused with AWT) is much more close to native look and feels, but I think it marries you a lot more to a particular platform. Check out Azureus for an SWT app in Java (http://www.azureus.com/\). Glimmer is the only JRuby SWT framework I know of - https://rubyforge.org/projects/glimmer/

Either way you go, it's possible to make apps that look good and look native, but how many apps look like iTunes that you'd say also look native? Pages doesn't look like iTunes, yet it looks native. What about Colloquy? I think a native look is a fuzzy definition. The most important thing is that you app does something useful, and does it easily. That's not to say there isn't value in making a nice interface that looks like it belongs on the OS with all of the other apps. (:

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Adam Gardner wrote:

On 05/02/2009, at 10:46 AM, Adam Gardner <adam.oddfellow@gmail.com>

31

Radosław Bułat wrote:

Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s| s.name }.sort

=> ["RedCloth", "amalgalite", "bcrypt-ruby", "concurrent", "curb",
"do_sqlite3", "ebb", "em_httpserver", "erlectricity", "eventmachine",
"eventmachine_httpserver", "fastthread", "fcgi", "ferret", "ffi",
"fxruby", "god", "hpricot", "json", "linecache", "memcached",
"mongrel", "mysql", "narray", "ncurses", "neuro", "nokogiri",
"oniguruma", "passenger", "raspell", "rbtree", "rcov", "rev", "rice",
"rmagick", "ruby-debug-base", "ruby-opengl", "ruby-postgres",
"ruby-prof", "rubygame", "rubynode", "sqlite3-ruby", "swiftiply",
"termios", "thin", "thin-turbo", "unicode", "zipruby"]

At this moment I have 307 installed gems (I like playing a lot with new things).

Not sure why this doesn't work for me:

$ ruby -e 'p Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s| s.name }.sort'

Still, looking at the output of `find -name '*.so'` on a couple of systems, and picking out the ones that are really used:

RubyRRDtool
ruby-opengl
json
rbtree
sqlite3-ruby
amalgalite
narray

···

--
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

32

James Gray wrote:

My favorite gems:

date ruby-debug readline strscan logger fileutils webby

Of those, I believe only ruby-debug and webby are gems. The rest are standard libraries that ship with Ruby. Also, date, logger, fileutils, and webby are not the native extensions Charlie is looking for, since they don't involve C code.

James Edward Gray II

Ah, the perils of being a part time programmer. Never quite know what you're doing. I wondered about that 'readline' entry was doing there.

gems, packages, module, libraries, standard, non-standard, not-so-standard, definitely NOT standard (oops, that's one of mine). I feel lucky to muddle through, most days, and I DO do that. I actually get quite a lot of work done with Ruby, without ever quite knowing how.... ha!

t.

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 12:50 AM, Tom Cloyd wrote:

--

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
<< tc@tomcloyd.com >> (email)
<< TomCloyd.com >> (website) << sleightmind.wordpress.com >> (mental health weblog)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

33

The cocoa objective-c java bridge is deprecated from my understanding, and cocoa is copyright, so there'd be little point, tho I dunno why jruby couldn't theoretically run the cooaruby code

Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

···

On 05/02/2009, at 12:29 PM, Logan Barnett <logustus@gmail.com> wrote:

On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Adam Gardner wrote:

Julian Leviston wrote:

How would it be technically possible to do jruby cocoa If the machines
weren't macs?

Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

On 05/02/2009, at 10:46 AM, Adam Gardner <adam.oddfellow@gmail.com>

It wouldn't be, but, so? Who says you can't use JRuby on a Mac?

I certainly use JRuby on Mac!
However, I think Julian is asking if his JRuby Cocoa app will run on things that aren't Macs. My thought is no. Cocoa would need to be running on the other platforms for that to work. My understanding is that Apple provides some Java libs that hook into Cocoa, which makes JRuby development possible.

Perhaps you're following the MVC pattern, and the Model and perhaps
Controller are written using normal old ruby code (perhaps with some
java stuff thrown in), and then you create a distinct View for different
platforms. Of course, I'm sure you could use Swing or AWT or something
(I'm not too familiar with Java GUI frameworks)... it'd be a lot less
effort, but with OS X GUI applications, if the interface is not done in
Cocoa or Carbon, it usually sticks out like a sore thumb.

Java Swing apps (including JRuby ones, like when you write a Monkeybars app - http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/\) by default on Macs will render components using the System Look and Feel, which under the hood will use the OS's native code to render buttons and other widgets. Check out an app like FrostWire (http://www.frostwire.com/ - Java) or JotBot (http://getjotbot.com/ - JRuby with Monkeybars)

SWT (not to be confused with AWT) is much more close to native look and feels, but I think it marries you a lot more to a particular platform. Check out Azureus for an SWT app in Java (http://www.azureus.com/\). Glimmer is the only JRuby SWT framework I know of - https://rubyforge.org/projects/glimmer/

Either way you go, it's possible to make apps that look good and look native, but how many apps look like iTunes that you'd say also look native? Pages doesn't look like iTunes, yet it looks native. What about Colloquy? I think a native look is a fuzzy definition. The most important thing is that you app does something useful, and does it easily. That's not to say there isn't value in making a nice interface that looks like it belongs on the OS with all of the other apps. (:

34

Logan Barnett wrote:

Perhaps you're following the MVC pattern, and the Model and perhaps
Controller are written using normal old ruby code (perhaps with some
java stuff thrown in), and then you create a distinct View for
different
platforms. Of course, I'm sure you could use Swing or AWT or something
(I'm not too familiar with Java GUI frameworks)... it'd be a lot less
effort, but with OS X GUI applications, if the interface is not done
in
Cocoa or Carbon, it usually sticks out like a sore thumb.

Java Swing apps (including JRuby ones, like when you write a
Monkeybars app - http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/\) by default on Macs
will render components using the System Look and Feel, which under the
hood will use the OS's native code to render buttons and other
widgets. Check out an app like FrostWire (http://www.frostwire.com/ -
Java) or JotBot (http://getjotbot.com/ - JRuby with Monkeybars)

SWT (not to be confused with AWT) is much more close to native look
and feels, but I think it marries you a lot more to a particular
platform. Check out Azureus for an SWT app in Java
(http://www.azureus.com/
). Glimmer is the only JRuby SWT framework I know of -
https://rubyforge.org/projects/glimmer/

Either way you go, it's possible to make apps that look good and look
native, but how many apps look like iTunes that you'd say also look
native? Pages doesn't look like iTunes, yet it looks native. What
about Colloquy? I think a native look is a fuzzy definition. The most
important thing is that you app does something useful, and does it
easily. That's not to say there isn't value in making a nice interface
that looks like it belongs on the OS with all of the other apps. (:

Point conceded that the most important thing is that your app does
something useful. And you'll never hear me argue, ever, that Apple
follows their own HIG with high consistency. What I'm referring to has a
lot to do with small details in layout and behavior that do not make an
app any less useful; Azureus is the only bittorrent client I use, and
the interface, though sometimes imperfect in its rendering, does not get
in my way in any significant manner. But it remains a fact that the
differences *are* noticeable, at least in the Java applications I've
used.

Ultimately, I brought up RubyCocoa not because I thought it would be
useful in JRuby, but because it was useful for me and it hadn't been
mentioned yet so far. JRuby and RubyCocoa/MacRuby really fill entirely
different needs. RubyCocoa was very useful for me as someone who needed
to make an application which called native OS X APIs*, but who only knew
Ruby, not Objective-C. I wouldn't ever use it to make a cross-platform
application, any more than I would use the ruby-win32 api for a
cross-platform application. That's not the point of having it.

*For reference, the things RubyCocoa allowed me to do were: registering
for NSWorkspace notifications to nicely handle not bugging the user if
the reason the application is being quit is because the user is logging
out (among other things); save user preferences using the NSUserDefaults
API and thus be able to manage those prefs via WorkGroup Manager (not
that I'm currently doing so, but I now could); add auto-updating
functionality via the Sparkle framework; use Interface Builder to create
the UI (say what you will, I really like Interface Builder as a tool);
define a dynamic dock menu. Some of these things undoubtably would have
been possible without directly calling Objective-C APIs. With RubyCocoa,
none of these were not only possible, they were fairly *easy*, and I
don't even know Objective-C to begin with. Ultimately, it's a matter of
choosing the right tool for the job.

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 5:54 PM, Adam Gardner wrote:

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

35

Don't ask me why but it will work if you load at least one gem by
rubygems. Try with:

ruby -rubygems -e "require 'rake'" -e 'p
Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s|
s.name }.sort'

My previous try was from irb session so it was already loaded many gems. Weird.
Rubygems sucks at many things, specially in loading *all* gems specs
so it end up with eating more memory if you have insalled many gems
(as I do).

···

2009/2/4 Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu>:

Not sure why this doesn't work for me:

$ ruby -e 'p Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map
{|s| s.name }.sort'

--
Pozdrawiam

Radosław Bułat
http://radarek.jogger.pl - mój blog

36

Tom Cloyd wrote:

James Gray wrote:

My favorite gems:

date ruby-debug readline strscan logger fileutils webby

Of those, I believe only ruby-debug and webby are gems. The rest are standard libraries that ship with Ruby. Also, date, logger, fileutils, and webby are not the native extensions Charlie is looking for, since they don't involve C code.

James Edward Gray II

Ah, the perils of being a part time programmer. Never quite know what you're doing. I wondered about that 'readline' entry was doing there.

gems, packages, module, libraries, standard, non-standard, not-so-standard, definitely NOT standard (oops, that's one of mine). I feel lucky to muddle through, most days, and I DO do that. I actually get quite a lot of work done with Ruby, without ever quite knowing how.... ha!

yes, ruby is quite a "gem" (oops!) :slight_smile:

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 12:50 AM, Tom Cloyd wrote:

--
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

37

The cocoa objective-c java bridge is deprecated from my understanding, and cocoa is copyright, so there'd be little point, tho I dunno why jruby couldn't theoretically run the cooaruby code

I'm not sure about the deprecation, although that typically doesn't mean much in the Java world (:
I don't understand what you mean by copyright (unless you mean that you can't port it to another platform).
If the CocoaRuby stuff calls out to native C bindings, JRuby won't be able to use it unless the bindings were made against FFI (I'm not sure what the exact process is, but FFI extensions work great in JRuby, whereas gems and other libs that depend on native C code don't work at all in JRuby). I strongly believe that CocoaRuby uses native extensions, but I could be wrong (:

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Julian Leviston wrote:

Blog: http://random8.zenunit.com/
Learn rails: http://sensei.zenunit.com/

38

Radosław Bułat wrote:

···

2009/2/4 Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu>:

Not sure why this doesn't work for me:

$ ruby -e 'p Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map
{|s| s.name }.sort'

Don't ask me why but it will work if you load at least one gem by
rubygems. Try with:

ruby -rubygems -e "require 'rake'" -e 'p
Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s|
s.name }.sort'

My previous try was from irb session so it was already loaded many gems. Weird.
Rubygems sucks at many things, specially in loading *all* gems specs
so it end up with eating more memory if you have insalled many gems
(as I do).

Thanks, that works.

--
       vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407

39

Logan Barnett wrote:

The cocoa objective-c java bridge is deprecated from my
understanding, and cocoa is copyright, so there'd be little point,
tho I dunno why jruby couldn't theoretically run the cooaruby code

I'm not sure about the deprecation, although that typically doesn't
mean much in the Java world (:
I don't understand what you mean by copyright (unless you mean that
you can't port it to another platform).
If the CocoaRuby stuff calls out to native C bindings, JRuby won't be
able to use it unless the bindings were made against FFI (I'm not sure
what the exact process is, but FFI extensions work great in JRuby,
whereas gems and other libs that depend on native C code don't work at
all in JRuby). I strongly believe that CocoaRuby uses native
extensions, but I could be wrong (:

I'm not 100% sure of the low-level mechanisms involved, but I do know
that RubyCocoa makes heavy use of FFI (that's libffi the C library, not
ruby-ffi), along with a Framework/Library metadata system called
BridgeSupport and a automatic generator of said metadata called
gen_bridge_metadata.rb . That being said, I believe there are also some
native extensions used in areas where metadata-based support was
particularly thorny.

···

On Feb 4, 2009, at 7:02 PM, Julian Leviston wrote:

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

40

Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s|
s.name}.uniq.sort
=> ["RedCloth", "eventmachine", "fastthread", "ferret", "hpricot",
"mongrel", "mysql", "narray", "ncurses", "neuro", "rcov", "rfuzz",
"rmagick", "ruby-debug-base", "ruby-fann", "ruby-opengl", "ruby-prof",
"rubygame", "rubysdl", "sandbox", "sqlite3-ruby", "termios", "thin"]

Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s|

s.name }.uniq.size
=> 23

···

2009/2/4 Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu>

Radosław Bułat wrote:

2009/2/4 Joel VanderWerf <vjoel@path.berkeley.edu>:

Not sure why this doesn't work for me:

$ ruby -e 'p Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0
}.map
{|s| s.name }.sort'

Don't ask me why but it will work if you load at least one gem by
rubygems. Try with:

ruby -rubygems -e "require 'rake'" -e 'p
Gem::Specification.list.select {|s| s.extensions.size > 0 }.map {|s|
s.name }.sort'

My previous try was from irb session so it was already loaded many gems.
Weird.
Rubygems sucks at many things, specially in loading *all* gems specs
so it end up with eating more memory if you have insalled many gems
(as I do).

Thanks, that works.

--
     vjoel : Joel VanderWerf : path berkeley edu : 510 665 3407