[PhillyOnRails] Ruby in a JVM

[Mat Schaffer]

On Jan 17, 2007, at 2:04 PM, Flinn Mueller wrote:

> My interest in ruby byte code is two fold, #1 to productize a rails  
> app, and #2 speed.  I believe I've read the JRuby could increase  
> the speed of ruby apps.  I'd love to be able to create single file  
> distribution (or bundle like apple's .app packages or a WAR file)  
> for a rails application that can be configured to run on a host  
> without compromising the source code.

Obfuscation is a topic that has crossed the ruby talk mailing list a  
number of times:
http://preview.tinyurl.com/ypzyjg [groups.google.com]

But I've never seen it answered to the total satisfaction of those  
trying to lock end users away from ruby code.  People often point to  
Ruby2CExtension or ZenObfuscate, but both of those aren't compatible  
with rails last I checked.

I'd be surprised if JRuby ran faster than regular Ruby, but I suppose  
it's possible.  If speed interests you, you might want to investigate  
YARV.  It just got merged into the Ruby trunk, so it'll be awhile  
before it's production.  But it promises some major speed increases  
(up to 11.7x in some cases):
http://www.rubychan.de/share/yarv_speedups.html

In short, rails probably isn't ready for what you're trying to do  
right now.  But people are working on it.

-Mat