Writing a simple Windows 7 GUI app in Ruby [closed]

Question

Has anyone used Ruby to develop a simple GUI app for Windows 7? Which GUI framework did you use? I am considering tK or WxRuby for the GUI and using Ocra to package. Will I need an installer too to install ruby and libs on the users machine?

This is new territory for me, and thoughts would be helpful.

Answer 1

Shoes is a nice ToolKit for a little GUI in no-time. But in Version3, the packager is somewhat broken. "green_shoes" is a shoes implementation as a gem, so packaging via ocra should work.

If you want to build a more complex UI, i recommend using JRuby and Swing (or SWT). With JRuby, you can use the rawr - gem to bundle up your application to a single .jar, .exe or .app, which contains everything you want. Only a Java installation on the target machine is required, which shouldn't be a problem nowadays. Swing is rock-solid and mature, and there are some Tools to build the UI using a visual designer (eg.: netbeans mantisse).

Another alternative may be http://visualruby.net/ which is some kind of IDE for ruby GUI apps using GTK and the Glade-Designer. I didn't use it yet, but it seems to work smoothly.

Last but not Least: The Shoes Team works hard to release Shoes4, which is based on JRuby and SWT. You may try it out if you like the shoes DSL, but it is still in development.

Other Toolkits i know more or less:

• TK (since the latest versions it looks good, should work with ocra)
• wxruby (seems dead)
• fxruby (has a new maintainer, should work, has a free book, but last time i used it, it looks terribly ugly and out-of-date)
• gtk+ (usable, but see visualruby for some comfort and guidelines)

Answer 2

Shoes is a cross-platform toolkit for writing graphical apps easily and artfully using Ruby. Unlike most other GUI toolkits, Shoes is designed to be easy and straightforward without losing power. Really, it’s easy!

shoesrb.com