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

The default language mode is ruby 1.9. You can change the language mode with a configure option.

For example, to compile 2.0 mode, use the following configure options:

  ./configure --enable-version=20


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.