Ruby for small devices?

Hello ruby fellows,

I would like to know if anyone has experience with embedding ruby in
small devices and if such project exists ?

In my current work, I'm using Elphel cameras, mobile phones, etc..
But ruby is pretty heavy, plus I don't know if it compiles on ARM or
other CPUs.

Any hint would be appreciated :slight_smile:

ยทยทยท

--
Cheers,
ย ย zimba

http://zimba.oree.ch

Check out the "Embedding Ruby" presentation from RubyConf 2005:

The stuff you're interested in starts around page 18, I'd say.

--Wilson.

ยทยทยท

On 12/9/05, zimba-tm <zimba.tm@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello ruby fellows,

I would like to know if anyone has experience with embedding ruby in
small devices and if such project exists ?

In my current work, I'm using Elphel cameras, mobile phones, etc..
But ruby is pretty heavy, plus I don't know if it compiles on ARM or
other CPUs.

Any hint would be appreciated :slight_smile:

--
Cheers,
  zimba

http://zimba.oree.ch

This is about Smalltalk on small devices, not Ruby, but it may be of
interest
http://www.daimi.au.dk/~marius/documents/andersen2004esug.pdf
http://www.smalltalksolutions.com/smalltalksolutions/pdf/Bak.pdf

zimba-tm wrote:

ยทยทยท

Hello ruby fellows,

I would like to know if anyone has experience with embedding ruby in
small devices and if such project exists ?

In my current work, I'm using Elphel cameras, mobile phones, etc..
But ruby is pretty heavy, plus I don't know if it compiles on ARM or
other CPUs.

Any hint would be appreciated :slight_smile:

--
Cheers,
  zimba

http://zimba.oree.ch

Check out the "Embedding Ruby" presentation from RubyConf 2005:
http://www.zenspider.com/dl/rubyconf2005/EmbeddedRuby.pdf

Good stuff.

I run Ruby on my iPAQ (I suppose zauri work as well) which has
a StrongArm 200 MHz (arm v4l)
32 MB flash, 32 MB RAM

and as in the above presentation, I chopped the stdlibs in a couple of
packages so I do not carry all the dependencies around. See
http://feeds.handhelds.org/ruby/ to get the general idea (polluted with some
apps) and bear in mind that I have 1.8.3 packages cross compiled as well
(but not uploaded). mm, I also see that my descriptions are a bit too much
copy'n'paste.

Bye,
Kero.

I just discovered Scratchbox (http://scratchbox.org) and its awesome for
cross-compilation of biggish apps.

[ quick overview:

   It's a cross-toolchain for arm and ppc. It's main 'wow' feature
   is that it uses qemu-arm to emulate an ARM host.
   You run '/scratchbox/login' and have root on an emulated ARM, then
build software.

   All the ease of compilation (i.e. you can just run './configure',
it ships with an svn client, etc.)
   except an order of magnitude faster (qemu is a bit slow, but i386
is much faster than arm
   in the first place, so it's a net win).

   For platforms that the emulator isn't good enough for, you can use 'sbrsh'
   to login to the PDA, mount the toolchain and source tree from your
   scratchbox using NFS and build stuff there.

]

Ruby 1.8.3 built with no trouble
( ext/dl expected a /bin/sh, but a symlink fixed that) and irb, etc runs fine
in the scratchbox. Now i just need to
copy the files onto my slug where it can run natively.

See the quick howto at:
http://scratchbox.org/documentation/user/scratchbox-1.0/html/tutorial.html

- that's all i needed, just substituted ruby for glib.

ยทยทยท

zimba-tm wrote:
> Hello ruby fellows,
>
> I would like to know if anyone has experience with embedding ruby in
> small devices and if such project exists ?
>
> In my current work, I'm using Elphel cameras, mobile phones, etc..
> But ruby is pretty heavy, plus I don't know if it compiles on ARM or
> other CPUs.
>
> Any hint would be appreciated :slight_smile:
>
> --
> Cheers,
> zimba
>
> http://zimba.oree.ch

--
Rasputin :: Jack of All Trades - Master of Nuns
http://number9.hellooperator.net/

The leaking Mutex problem showcased in the presentation page 27, I
think the following change fixes it at least for #synchronize :

  def unlock
    return unless @locked
    Thread.critical = true
- @locked = false
    begin
      t = @waiting.shift
+ @locked = t # if there is a waiting thread, keep the mutex locked
      t.wakeup if t
    rescue ThreadError
      retry
    end
    Thread.critical = false
# if @locked is false, a thread entering #lock sets Thread.critical=true here,
# checks for @locked, sees that it's false, and jumps the queue
    begin
      t.run if t
    rescue ThreadError
    end
    self
  end

ยทยทยท

On 12/9/05, Wilson Bilkovich <wilsonb@gmail.com> wrote:

Check out the "Embedding Ruby" presentation from RubyConf 2005:
http://www.zenspider.com/dl/rubyconf2005/EmbeddedRuby.pdf

Ok, thanks a lot ppl :slight_smile:

Wilson, the paper was a very interesting read. It's quite funny to see
what people do with ruby.

Kero, feeds.handhels.org seems down for me. Are you sure it's the right domain ?

For more precisions, Elphel cameras[1] run with an Etrax Axis
Processor and an FPGA.
I will look into this during the week.

Cheers,
ย ย zimba

http://zimba.oree.ch

[1]: http://wiki.elphel.com/

argh, okay, maybe third time's the charm:

while (Thread.critical = true; @locked and @locked != Thread.current)

sorry about that

ยทยทยท

On 12/12/05, Ilmari Heikkinen <ilmari.heikkinen@gmail.com> wrote:

On 12/12/05, Ilmari Heikkinen <ilmari.heikkinen@gmail.com> wrote:
> The leaking Mutex problem showcased in the presentation page 27, I
> think the following change fixes it at least for #synchronize :

forgot the #lock-part:

  def lock
- while (Thread.critical = true; @locked)
+ while (Thread.critical = true; @locked != Thread.current) # go
ahead if we have the lock
      @waiting.push Thread.current
      Thread.stop
    end
    @locked = true
    Thread.critical = false
    self
  end

Anything else I missed?

Kero, feeds.handhels.org seems down for me. Are you sure it's the right domain ?

Sorry, that should be
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