plugin should support jruby-based compilation of Ruby -> bytecode about jruby-gradle-plugin

[ysb33r]

To be able to try out the concept today, one can bastardise JRubyExec

task rubyCompile( type : JRubyExec) {
  jrubyArgs '-S', 'jrubyc', '-t', "${buildDir}/classes"
  script 'one.rb'
  scriptArgs 'two.rb','three.rb'
}

We can look at creating a plugin to do this which allows for creating additional tasks to mirror some of the other compile tasks i.e. rubyCompile and rubyTestCompile, which can live in sourceSets such as src/main/ruby and src/test/ruby. Once we do this we are no longer in the realm of trying to build with rake and package, but rather treat ruby as a first class citizen in gradle, like groovy, scala and clojure.

[mojavelinux]

👍

[ysb33r]

Should we revisit this once JRuby 9.0.0.0 is out?

[rtyler]

I think this still makes sense to provide, but I would no longer go the route I suggested before.

I think a CompileRuby type task which relies on sourceSets makes a lot of sense for solving this problem. It's not something I think should go strictly into a task

[mojavelinux]

Sounds reasonable. +1 for composable tasks.

[mcandre]

+1

[rtyler]

@mojavelinux or @mcandre would this feature request still be interesting to either of you? I'm cleaning up the backlog, and I personally don't have a requirement for this any longer.

[mojavelinux]

To be honest, I don't remember what the use case was. So I don't have an immediate need for it.

[rtyler]

Just made a gist for an example in Gitter which kind of does this: https://gist.github.com/rtyler/7635e9c110548882504729ff7445ed0b

[rtyler]

I think this might be straightforward enough to support. I'm going to bring it in to 2.0 like the over-optimistic sucker I am.

[ysb33r]

I think this a great idea, but let's not rush an implementation. We can do a much better job than the quick gist you did.

[rtyler]

@ysb33r Since you've certainly got an idea in mind for how this should be implemented, would you like to take it on?

If not, perhaps writing up a specification or something like that would help me understand what a good job might look like here to you

[ysb33r]

This will have to be a joint effort as I'll need to understand more about how the ruby compilation is used in practice.

[rtyler]

The two places I believe ahead-of-time compilation are used/useful for are:

1. Speeding things up at runtime, i.e. avoiding that step at runtime.
2. Blending Java and Ruby code together in a primarily Java project.

Neither of these are pressing requirements for me personally, but I understand why some people might find them useful 😸