Can I compile IronRuby project in VS2010 into DLL/exe file?

Question

After created IronRuby project in VS2010 by using IronRuby v1.1.x, I was able to use almost .NET library by importing them. But can't actually compile ironruby into exe/DLL. I see the build option but can't build any exe or DLL from IronRuby project. Please help !

Answer 1

You can't compile your IronRuby classes into a .NET assembly and then access them from another assembly.

Preet is right that the nearest you can get is to embed your IronRuby scripts in (say) a C# assembly. From the C# side it would then be possible to instantiate your Ruby classes. So given the following Ruby class:

class HelloWorld
  def say_hello
    puts 'Hello'
  end
end

You could load this from a resource file and run it from C#:

using Microsoft.Scripting.Hosting;
using Microsoft.Scripting.Runtime;
using IronRuby;

var runtime = IronRuby.Ruby.CreateRuntime();
var engine = runtime.GetEngine("ruby");

var assembly = Assembly.GetExecutingAssembly();
var stream = assembly.GetManifestResourceStream("PathToResource.test.rb");
string code = new StreamReader(stream).ReadToEnd();

var scope = engine.CreateScope();
engine.Execute(code, scope);

dynamic helloWorldClass = engine.Runtime.Globals.GetVariable("HelloWorld");
dynamic ironRubyObject = engine.Operations.CreateInstance(helloWorldClass);
ironRubyObject.say_hello();

Answer 2

There's a great IronRuby gem that packages IronRuby files into a Windows executable.

https://github.com/kumaryu/irpack

To use:

igem install irpack
irpack -o Program.exe Program.rb

Answer 3

Since Iron Ruby is simply DLR based code. You should be able to add the code into a resource of any assembly. Ultimately you'll need a bootstrap to load the code. That will most likely be a CLR language.