Ruby project yields to Microsoft

A community driven project for Ruby source code to run natively onMicrosoft's .NET framework has shut down, faced by progress from anofficial Microsoft effort.
Rather than repeat the work on Microsoft's own IronRuby, Ruby.NET is closing its doors just three months after its latest milestone release, and following an initial wave of developer buzz,.
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Microsoft, meanwhile, has welcomed Ruby.NET project participants toits IronRuby project, licensed under the Microsoft Public License(Ms-PL).

John Lam, a Microsoft Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR) team programmer, said Ruby.NET project leader Wayne Kelly is "refocusing" his efforts on IronRuby.

Kelly has moved to head off suggestions Microsoft pressured him tokill Ruby.NET, which initially received funding from MicrosoftResearch. Ruby.NET lags IronRuby overall, but its parser is being added to Microsoft's effort.

Kelly indicated on the Ruby.NET mailing list that Ruby.NET was simply overtaken despite getting a good head start.

Last year's release of Microsoft's IronRuby had called into questionRuby.NET's "unstated goal" of heading towards a production-qualityversion. Kelly got on board with IronRuby following last week'sLang.NET Symposium where the projects compared progress. "I've come tothe conclusion that the DLR is clearly here to stay - it's becoming aneven more important part of the Microsoft platform," Kelly said.

"Whilst Ruby.NET initially had a good head start on the IronRubyproject; by incorporating the Ruby.NET parser and scanner and byleveraging the DLR, I now believe that IronRuby is more likely tosucceed as a production-quality implementation of Ruby on the .NETplatform," Kelly said.

The DLR,unveiled by Microsoft in May 2007, adds a set of features to the .NETframework's Common Language Runtime (CLR) designed to improve theperformance of scripting languages on the CLR and to also enable themto share code.
Lam, who joined Microsoft in 2006 having built the RubyCLR for Rubyapplications on .NET, welcomed the end of duplicate Ruby efforts. "Morepeople working in parallel on libraries means that folks will get aworking Ruby on .NET that runs real programs sooner. And that'sgoodness for everyone, from the contributors who want to see their codeused, to devs who want to write Ruby programs on the .NET," he said.