1. What is Rubinius

Rubinius is an implementation of the Ruby programming language.

Rubinius includes a bytecode virtual machine, parser, bytecode compiler,
garbage collector, and just-in-time (JIT) native machine code compiler. The
Ruby core library is written almost entirely in Ruby. Rubinius provides the
same standard libraries as Matz's Ruby implementation (MRI). Rubinius also
provides C-API compatibility for native C extensions.

Rubinius currently is compatible with Ruby version 1.8.7. Full support for Ruby
version 1.9.3 is in progress.

Rubinius runs on Mac OS X and many Unix/Linux operating systems. Support for
Microsoft Windows is coming soon.

Most popular Ruby applications, like Rails, run on Rubinius.


2. License

Rubinius uses the BSD license. See LICENSE for details.


3. Installing Rubinius from Source

To install Rubinius, use the following steps:

  1. Ensure that MRI 1.8.7+, rubygems, rake, and git are installed
  2. git clone git://github.com/rubinius/rubinius.git
  3. cd rubinius
  4. ./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/dir
  5. rake install

When the install process finishes, follow the directions printed to the
terminal to add the Rubinius executable (bin) directory to your PATH.

See Section 5. Language Modes below for more information about configuring
Rubinius for different Ruby language versions.


4. Using RubyGems

Rubinius comes with RubyGems built-in. To install a gem, run the following:

  rbx -S gem install <gem_name>


5. Language Modes

Rubinius implements multiple Ruby language features in one executable. You can
select the language mode at runtime by passing the -X18, -X19, or -X20 command
line option or by setting the RBXOPT environment variable. The following two
commands are equivalent:

  RBXOPT=-X19 bin/rbx -v
  bin/rbx -X19 -v

The default language mode is 1.8. You can change which language modes are
enabled and which one is the default mode with configure options.

For example, to enable both 1.9 and 2.0 modes, with 1.9 the default, use the
follwing configure options:

  ./configure --enable-version=1.9,2.0 --default-version=1.9

The --enable-version option takes a comma-separated list of versions. The
--default-version option takes a single version. If only a single version is
enabled, setting the default version is redundant.


6. Documentation

After installing Rubinius, run 'rbx docs' to access the built-in documentation
at any time.


7. Tickets

Please file tickets for bugs or problems. The issue tracker is:

  http://github.com/rubinius/rubinius/issues


8. Contributing

The Rubinius team welcomes contributions. For more information read the
CONTRIBUTING file in the root directory of Rubinius.