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I'm looking to build an iPhone app, but I don't have enough time to learn Objective-C. I already know Ruby and discovered MacRuby. Is it possible to build an iPhone app using MacRuby alone, without any knowledge of Objective-C?

picardo
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    No need to downvote; it is a valid question and the last line is a spin on some of the others. – bbum Feb 12 '11 at 21:00
  • Not really a duplicate; sorry for the noise. – bbum Feb 13 '11 at 02:54
  • Latest seems to be here: http://pogodan.com/blog/2011/06/07/macruby-on-ios-5-confirmed. TLDR; Garbage Collection is coming to iOS5 it's a good sign but wait and see. – Evolve Feb 10 '12 at 03:16

3 Answers3

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An answer to the question has been updated by RubyMotion:

RubyMotion is a revolutionary toolchain for iOS. It lets you quickly develop and test native iOS applications for iPhone or iPad, all using the awesome Ruby language you know and love.

Ain Tohvri
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  • RubyMotion seems like a thousand kittens playing the piano while sliding down a double-rainbow. – Johannes Fahrenkrug May 07 '12 at 14:31
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    And what does that mean, really? I think that RubyMotion looks very promising. It doesn't hide iOS from you at all, which I think is really smart. Instead, you can call iOS using Ruby, which results in vastly less code to read and debug. True, no xcode integration, but with this version of xcode, that just means "less fail". I welcome simply using TextMate and the command line - I've been forced to resort to using TextMate anyway to edit iOS projects, it's just faster, less cluttered, no crashing. As for no InterfaceBuilder support, if you are using that, you are just *doing it wrong*, IMHO. – Rob May 20 '12 at 16:02
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This is a dupe of Can you use MacRuby to develop applications for the Mac App Store? (more or less).

Is it possible to build an iPhone app using MacRuby alone, without any knowledge of Objective-C?

In short, no.

All of the APIs (system frameworks), documentation, dev tools, examples, and the majority of the development community use Objective-C. You are going to have to know Objective-C through and through to be able to write an app against the iOS or Mac OS X system APIs anyway.

As well, the MacRuby runtime uses the Objective-C garbage collector that ships with Mac OS X. While porting that collector to iOS/ARM is likely not that hard (the source is available), the system frameworks don't support it; it won't work.

Community
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bbum
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  • From what I understand, MacRuby is accepted for the Mac App Store but is not (yet) allowed on the iPhone App Store. See this discussion: http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macruby-devel/2010-November/006475.html – Mark Wilbur Jan 08 '12 at 09:26
  • Without GC on iOS, Macruby won't run for pulpy technical reasons. Interpreted code has been allowed on the app store for quite a while now. – bbum Jan 08 '12 at 15:36
  • RubyMotion is MacRuby for iOS. Unfortunately, it's a commercial toolchain – Igbanam Jul 23 '12 at 05:36
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MacRuby is not yet ported to iOS.

An Apple engineer revealed on Twitter last September that work is being done to port MacRuby to iOS.

Until such a release sees the light of day, however, you will not be able to use MacRuby to write iOS apps.

Apple recently let it become known that MacRuby is to be included with the next release of OS X. It certainly looks like MacRuby may be on its way to becoming an Apple-blessed means of developing apps for OS X and iOS. One can only hope at this point, but these early indications are promising.

Legion
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