SL4A vs Ruboto on Android Application Development

Question

I am thinking about creating apps on Android using JRuby (or a suitable variant of Ruby for Android).

According to my research there are two current projects that support Ruby development on Android:

1. Ruboto
2. SL4A

From the FAQ of the Ruboto wiki on github it seems like Ruboto is ready for application development, but does not yet support JIT compilation, and the application has to be packaged with libraries which give it a big footprint (for mobile device installation).

I don't have enough knowledge about SL4A but it seems like SL4A also tries to run JRuby scripts on the JVM. But the main thing is that SL4A is still in alpha, so I don't know if it can be used for app development.

Can someone with a better knowledge of these platforms suggest which one should be used? Also, in the near future, which one has the better probability of becoming more mature in terms of JIT (performance), lower footprint, and better API access to Android?

Answer 1

Mirah, by the developer of JRuby, already with some production apps, is appropriate for Android. One can use the Android API directly while mentally converting the Java syntax as you do so to 'almost-Ruby', whose syntax it 'stole'. It adds no library files (instead, compiler syntax plugins are used) and it has literally exactly the same runtime speed as Java. So it features performance, zero footprint and ideal API access to Android.