What is this Merlin thing in IronRuby?

One of our challenges in the IronRuby project is reconciling two different source code layouts - the external subversion layout and our internal Team Foundation Server layout. We have quite a different environment internally, complete with customized shells etc. I'm the guy responsible for the transformation script that lays things out for you guys to hack on without having to take dependencies on our internal environment - so bugs here are all my fault.

The guts of the transformation script can be found in the Rakefile for those who are curious.

Since this is the first big test of this system, there are some issues that folks have found. For the time being, you should be able to build from the command line via the rakefile (rake compile). Note that you must run from the same directory as the rakefile - there is a bug in the rakefile for generating resources.

I still have to put together a .sln file for external folks, and remove some of the key signing residue from our .csproj files.

Oh yes, Merlin is the original code-name for our team, which was originally IronPython but has now expanded to include the Dynamic Language Runtime and IronRuby.

Comments

[Aaron Junod]

For the impatient, I posted a temporary sln file here. Thanks again for the hard work, I don't think I could be any more siked for IronRuby..

http://rubydoes.net/2007/09/02/building-and-modifying-ironrubys-second-drop/

[Rob Bazinet]

@Aaron, the link is bad.

[Paul Betts]

Your Rake file is very Windows-path specific - you should try to use File.join instead of + '\somedir', that way on non-Windows it does the right thing. Also, you should parameterize the C# compiler, Mono calls it MCS, not CSC - it's little things, but I think people might perceive it as anti-crossplatform

[Aaron Junod]

Link is working now.. may have been godaddy .htaccess caching.. If not hit the root of http://rubydoes.net , it'll be the top post.

[Ashish Ranjan]

Hi,
installed .NET runtime and ruby one click installer(to run rake) , when i try to build through rake compile it gives error

C:\layouts>rake compile
(in C:/layouts)
rake aborted!
can't convert nil into String
C:/layouts/rakefile:21:in `+'
(See full trace by running task with --trace)
------
Then i run it as: rake compile --trace to get extended error msgs:

C:\layouts>rake compile --trace
(in C:/layouts)
rake aborted!
can't convert nil into String
C:/layouts/rakefile:21:in `+'
C:/layouts/rakefile:21
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.2/lib/rake.rb:1855:in `load'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.2/lib/rake.rb:1855:in `load_rakefile'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.2/lib/rake.rb:1929:in `run'
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/rake-0.7.2/bin/rake:7
c:/ruby/bin/rake.bat:20:in `load'
c:/ruby/bin/rake.bat:20

[Seo Sanghyeon]

@Ashish, run it inside SDK command prompt.

[John Januszczak]

John, I debated leaving this comment on Flickr instead of here, so if this is the wrong place for this, please accept my apologies...I wanted to mention what an excellent photograph this is! I also have a D70, but until a few weeks ago it has been gathering dust in a drawer for the last couple years. I am now learning how to use the camera and take good photographs in earnest and this shot is really textbook material - the pail is not in the bull's eye, law of thirds (beach, water, sky) with a slight emphasis on the big sky - I think it evokes something of the experience of actually being there.

In fairness to the technology aspect of this post(!), I actually saw you speak at the Toronto Visual Basic Users Group way back in the early days of .NET. I remember you being a dynamic speaker with lots of passion for the technology - I am really happy that things seem to have evolved nicely for you. I have downloaded your IronRuby and I am looking forward to playing around with it.

[John Lam]

@John:

I'm glad that you liked the shot! The trick was that I didn't want to actually lie in the wet sand so I had to shoot without looking through the viewfinder! I set the manual focus point to the rightmost element and used the lens distance meter to know that I had locked onto the pail. I nailed it with the first shot so I was happy :)