Fxruby installation posted by Tom Malone @ Thu, 15 May 2008 22:16:33 -0000

Tom Malone — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:16:33 -0000

Lyle,

Thanks! That was the problem. Now that I have that package installed I’m up and running.

Tom

Fxruby installation posted by Lyle Johnson @ Thu, 15 May 2008 15:09:04 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Thu, 15 May 2008 15:09:04 -0000

Tom, I did a Google search for “hardy heron fxruby” and found this thread from the Ubuntu forums. The solution seems to be installing the “libxrandr-dev” package (i.e. “sudo apt-get install libxrandr-dev”) before attempting to install FXRuby.

Please let me know if this does (or doesn’t) fix the problem. I don’t currently have a Hardy Heron installation to experiment, but can set one up in a VM if necessary.

Fxruby installation posted by Tom Malone @ Thu, 15 May 2008 10:51:31 -0000

Tom Malone — Thu, 15 May 2008 10:51:31 -0000

Lyle,

I’m having a lot of trouble getting the FXRuby gem to compile on Ubuntu Hardy Heron. I have followed the instructions, installing libfox-1.6-dev, after installing Ruby and RubyGems, but the FXRuby gem just doesn’t compile. I have tried removing and reinstalling Ruby altogether through aptitude (and through Synaptic, the GUI package manager), but still have been unsuccessful.

It says “Cannot find -lxrandr”. I do have libxrandr installed (I checked in Synaptic). Is there some way I need to communicate it’s location to gem? Which file does it need to know about?

Thanks!
Tom Malone

Fxruby installation posted by David Kapp @ Mon, 05 May 2008 03:54:43 -0000

David Kapp — Mon, 05 May 2008 03:54:43 -0000

EDIT If you install fxruby via MacPorts right now, it’ll install a new version of Ruby as well… which would normally be fine, but it seems to break Rails right now (you’ll get the now-infamous “Rails requires RubyGems >= 0.9.4.” error…). So I don’t recommend doing this unless you don’t plan on using Rails. And odds are you do. ;)

Just a little heads up from another Leopard user. I updated MacPorts & Ruby as recommended, and then tried installing FXRuby, but ran into the problem Lyle detailed on his blog (about g++ not actually getting called – see here ) even with the new versions. That said, the old solution that worked for him – just running the install via port a second time worked like a charm. Not sure why, but it did. So if you’re having issues still, you might want to just try running

sudo port -v install rb-fxruby

again.

Lyle, I’m liking the book, really excited to dig into it. :)

Erratum #31625 posted by Ira Davis @ Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:08:15 -0000

Ira Davis — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 20:08:15 -0000

I had tried to update the fox gems and didn’t get much success so I reinstalled Ruby (from 1.8.6-25 to 1.8.6-26) and now the symbols are recognized. I was going to update the earlier post and saw your response.

Looks like a reinstall cleared things up. Thanks for your efforts and time.

Erratum #31625 posted by Lyle Johnson @ Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:28:26 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 15:28:26 -0000

Just a quick note concerning erratum #31625, which has to do with an error message you might see when running the code examples from the book. If you see an error message like:

wrong argument type Hash (expected Data) (TypeError)

it likely indicates that you’re using an old version of FXRuby and need to upgrade.

interesting title but... posted by Lyle Johnson @ Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:00 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 18:14:00 -0000

The book is looking great by the way!

Thanks, Alan! The book is now officially released (well, I hope I’m not jumping the gun by saying that) and I should be getting my print copy of it the next day or so. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product.

interesting title but... posted by Alan Maciel Salcedo @ Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:14:28 -0000

Alan Maciel Salcedo — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 15:14:28 -0000

I agree with Lyle, There are some cases when you have to use the web aproach but there are other cases (very specific for some of my clients) when you have to use development of the client gui aproach. The book is looking great by the way!!

JRuby posted by Lyle Johnson @ Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:01:26 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 17:01:26 -0000

No. Like any other C/C++-based extension for Ruby, FXRuby won’t run on JRuby (or IronRuby, for that matter). I am interested in seeing whether I can get it to work with Rubinius at some point in the future.

JRuby posted by Chad Oliver @ Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:30:52 -0000

Chad Oliver — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 14:30:52 -0000

Can you run FXRuby programs on JRuby?

Thanks

Fxruby installation posted by Lyle Johnson @ Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:39:36 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 01:39:36 -0000

As of the newly released FXRuby 1.6.14, there is now a binary gem for Mac OS X (Leopard). This gem contains everything you need to get started working with FXRuby on OS X, and doesn’t depend on MacPorts or otherwise requiring you to compile anything. Just type:

sudo gem install fxruby

and that should do the trick. If you run into problems, please report them here or, preferably, on the FXRuby users mailing list mentioned in the book.

Fxruby installation posted by Lyle Johnson @ Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:53:54 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 00:53:54 -0000

Eric, the book has already gone to press and so it’s too late to add any additional instructions about building FXRuby using the stuff that ships with Leopard. However, it’s never too late to improve the online installation documentation to include such information.

One of the problems with building everything from scratch is that there are so many dependencies for a comprehensive build of FXRuby. There’s FOX, of course, plus the image support libraries (libjpeg, libtiff and libpng), none of which ship with Leopard. But you’re right that for end users who don’t need all of those development and build tools, we need a more streamlined distribution (similar to the binary gem for Windows).

Fxruby installation posted by Eric Monti @ Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:14:01 -0000

Eric Monti — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 06:14:01 -0000

Lyle I just got my copy of the combo. Thanks for this. I’ve been looking long and hard for a capable cross-platform GUI toolkit for ruby and a guide for getting familiar with it quickly.

A note of advice after skimming the installation section. For your final print of the book, I’d highly recommend including both the macports install or David Rupp’s procedure. Personally, I don’t have major objections with using macports, but if I can avoid it, I will. I have several colleagues (with whom I’ll probably be sharing some of the fruits of my FXRuby labors) who would probably pitch a fit at the notion of installing a /usr/local or /opt/local instance of ruby when they could stick with the Apple provided 1.8.6 version that comes with Leopard.

I’d also like to take this opportunity to thank David for his concise post on the installation steps and recommend this as an option for anybody else looking to get up and running quickly with FXRuby and avoiding the macports multiple instance scenario.

Cheers!

GUI Components posted by Lyle Johnson @ Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:05:04 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 16:05:04 -0000

Chad, the book has already gone to press so we can’t get it into this editio, but this sounds like something I could add to the FXRuby web site at some point. Are you thinking in terms of a graphical display, e.g. screenshots of all of the widgets?

GUI Components posted by Chad Oliver @ Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:54:07 -0000

Chad Oliver — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 13:54:07 -0000

It would be very useful if the book included a section that displays all the available GUI components for FXRuby.

Fxruby installation posted by Lyle Johnson @ Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:23:24 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 16:23:24 -0000

Just wanted to post this info here as well. As of the latest update to the ruby port in MacPorts, FXRuby builds properly on Leopard. Read about it here.

Distributing the application posted by Stephen Smith @ Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:00:40 -0000

Stephen Smith — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 04:00:40 -0000

Thanks for the quick response Lyle. I will check out the two solutions you have detailed and report back here (as well as the FXRuby users’ mailing list).

why fx? posted by bryon mayo @ Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:25:32 -0000

bryon mayo — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 01:25:32 -0000

Thanks for answering my post. I didn’t realize they had published qtRuby as well and it was more of question whether the publisher had decided that fxruby was the defacto gui for ruby. It appears they have not and that they are simply publishing any good reference material. I look forward to learning and reading the book.

why fx? posted by Lyle Johnson @ Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:28:40 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 13:28:40 -0000

I’m not sure who you’re posing your question to. Are you asking why I (the author) wrote this book, or why the publishers decided to publish it?

I got involved with FOX’s development pretty early on, because Jeroen van der Zijp (FOX’s creator) and I were co-workers. Once I discovered the Ruby programming language (in 2000), I started working on FXRuby and the rest is history.

I don’t presume to speak for the publishers, but I think they would say that they decided to publish the book because I submitted a proposal and they decided it was a good business idea for them to pursue. They have previously published a book on QtRuby, by the way. I believe that if you or some other author were interested in writing about one of the other GUI toolkits for Ruby, they’d be interested in hearing from you.

why fx? posted by bryon mayo @ Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:15:28 -0000

bryon mayo — Fri, 22 Feb 2008 06:15:28 -0000

so maybe this is answered in the book but why fox instead of one of the other gui apis? Is it because you feal fox is the clear leader in ruby gui’s or what exactly drove it to this point of publishing fox ruby over the other gui’s?

Distributing the application posted by Lyle Johnson @ Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:18:21 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 16:18:21 -0000

The FXRuby binaries that I distribute for Windows statically link in the FOX library, so yes, building a Windows executable with exerb pulls in the FXRuby library, which in turn includes FOX. As I noted earlier, this used to work like a charm with exerb and as far as I know it still does.

On other platforms you would need to make sure that FOX (and other dependencies) are statically linked into FXRuby, or otherwise make sure that they get included in the bundle.

Distributing the application posted by Joe Van Dyk @ Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:07:52 -0000

Joe Van Dyk — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:07:52 -0000

Lyle, does exerb also package up the fox toolkit library?

Distributing the application posted by Lyle Johnson @ Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:01:51 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 03:01:51 -0000

I forgot to add: If you try one or both of these approaches and run into any snags, please post here or (even better) to the FXRuby users’ mailing list. For that matter, if you try it and it works fine, we’d like to know that too. ;)

Distributing the application posted by Lyle Johnson @ Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:58:42 -0000

Lyle Johnson — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 02:58:42 -0000

An excellent question, Stephen, and it’s really just a specific instance of the more general question of how to distribute any Ruby application. There are basically two different scenarios I’m familiar with.

If you’re distributing the application to people who you already expect to have a working Ruby installation, the easiest path might be to package your application as a Ruby Gem that in turn depends on the FXRuby gem. Folks are most familiar with the use of RubyGems to package libraries (such as FXRuby itself), but it can also be used to package applications (such as Rake). Consult the RubyGems documentation for tips on how to write your Gem specification for such packages.

If you’re looking for a more all-inclusive solution that doesn’t depend on an existing Ruby installation, then yes, a tool like RubyScript2exe (http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/) or Exerb (http://exerb.sourceforge.jp/index.en.html) is probably the best choice. I and others have used exerb with FXRuby applications in the past, and it works like a charm. I haven’t tried it lately, but I would expect that it still works fine.

Distributing the application posted by Stephen Smith @ Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:59:35 -0000

Stephen Smith — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 03:59:35 -0000

Hi Lyle, I’m considering purchasing the book but I’m wondering how an FxRuby app is distributed to end users? I don’t see anything in the Table of Contents that describes how one would distribute his/her FxRuby application. Is this covered in the book?

Incidentally, I also looked on fxruby.org for an answer to this question and I did not find anything.

I have no experience with distributing ruby apps but I have seen that a ruby2exe progam is available (I do have experience with py2exe). Would that be a recommended way to distribute an FxRuby app?

Thanks for any info,
Stephen.

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