Why doesn't IronRuby have the same tools that IronPython does?

Question

Hi,

I've been using Ruby as my main scripting language for years but switched to .NET several years ago. I'd like to continue using Ruby (primarily for testing) BUT the toolset for IronRuby is really nonexistent. Why?

In Python, meanwhile, there are project templates and full intellisense support. Why isn't there something like that for IronRuby? The only thing I've been able to find on it is "there are no plans for VS integration at this time." Why???

Answer 1

IronRuby has been out for 4 weeks, IronPython for 4 years. Developing an IDE takes months, if not years. When exactly where they supposed to squeeze that in?

Also, I believe the IronRuby team is smaller than the IronPython team.

There actually is a Ruby plugin for Visual Studio produced by SapphireSteel. It's called Ruby in Steel. Unfortunately, they currently only support MRI, YARV and JRuby. They did have IronRuby support at one point, but they removed it, because a) none of their customers actually used it, b) IronRuby was still changing faster than they could adapt and c) some of the IronRuby developers announced that Microsoft is considering developing IronRuby support for Visual Studio in the future and SapphireSteel didn't see much business sense in trying to compete with Microsoft.

Also, Visual Studio is not the only IDE on the planet. MonoDevelop has an open bug for IronRuby support, for example. And I'm pretty confident that it wouldn't be too hard to add IronRuby support to NetBeans: it already supports JRuby, MRI and YARV.

Answer 2

Shortly the same support for IronRuby is arriving to visual studio. It will take maybe another couple of months but then it will get there. They first needed to get the language implementation right.

Answer 3

SharpDevelop has support for IronRuby

SharpDevelop's approach uses parsing from C# to generate code in any language. This has the advantage of making 3rd-party controls instantly usable: SD captures the code emitted in the IDE when a control is dropped, and through the language plug-in, generates the appropriate code in the particular language.

#develop 4, with a WPF IDE, is in alpha, and slated to go into beta sometime this summer.

One advantage of #develop over VS is that in comparison to VS, accessing the IDE programatically to create builder add-ins is easy and straightforward. VS2010 is better than before, but still nowhere close.

hth,

Hank