Can Ruby be used for UI based Windows apps?

Question

I'm sorry if this question is noob-ish but I'm not having much luck with Google. Can Ruby be used for UI based Windows apps? I'm not looking for a Rails app, just Ruby.

Thanks

Answer 1

You have couple of options.

• Use Gtk Ruby which works on Windows as well (http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/).
• You can use WxRuby or Tk.
• You can use JRuby and Swing.In fact there are high level libraries which can help you there, such as (http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/)

Answer 2

Yes, but the experience will vary depending on how you hook up the UI. TK or gtk, wxRuby, ruby shoes (not sure how alive that one is right now), Qt (which is cool) and fox (aka fxRuby) are some of the options. If you like to hurt yourself, you can hook directly to Win32 libraries, but I doubt you'll want to.

Additionally, if you target the nascent IronRuby, you can use WinForms or WPF.