I finally had a chance to play around with the latest download of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. At first, I was excited, as my little DSL test application was able to run perfectly. Blocks, instance_eval, singleton classes all worked fine for me. Very cool!
Then I decided to experiment with the REXML ruby parser. I did so despite the fact that the compiler authors have stated in their project goals that “We do not however plan to implement the other Ruby libraries that commonly ship with the Ruby distribution, such as CGI and DBM (except for those implemented 100% in Ruby)”. Since REXML is however completely implemented in Ruby, I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately, I discovered that the Ruby.NET authors did not lie when they said that “Implementation is not yet complete but we have now implemented the vast majority of Ruby’s builtin classes and modules. We have fixed large numbers of existing bugs, but many still remain.”
I tried to run the simplest possible REXML sample:
require "rexml/document"
doc = REXML::Document.new File.new("mydoc.xml")
But here was my result:
loading rexml/document
loading rexml/element
loading rexml/parent
loading rexml/child
loading rexml/node
loading rexml/parseexception
finished loading rexml/parseexception
finished loading rexml/node
finished loading rexml/child
finished loading rexml/parent
loading rexml/namespace
loading rexml/xmltokens
finished loading rexml/xmltokens
finished loading rexml/namespace
loading rexml/attribute
loading rexml/text
loading rexml/entity
loading rexml/source
loading rexml/encoding
finished loading rexml/encoding
finished loading rexml/source
finished loading rexml/entity
loading rexml/doctype
loading rexml/attlistdecl
finished loading rexml/attlistdecl
finished loading rexml/doctype
finished loading rexml/text
finished loading rexml/attribute
loading rexml/cdata
finished loading rexml/cdata
loading rexml/xpath
loading rexml/functions
finished loading rexml/functions
loading rexml/xpath\_parser
loading rexml/syncenumerator
finished loading rexml/syncenumerator
loading rexml/parsers/xpathparser
finished loading rexml/parsers/xpathparser
finished loading rexml/xpath\_parser
finished loading rexml/xpath
finished loading rexml/element
loading rexml/xmldecl
finished loading rexml/xmldecl
loading rexml/comment
finished loading rexml/comment
loading rexml/instruction
finished loading rexml/instruction
loading rexml/rexml
finished loading rexml/rexml
loading rexml/output
finished loading rexml/output
loading rexml/parsers/baseparser
finished loading rexml/parsers/baseparser
loading rexml/parsers/streamparser
finished loading rexml/parsers/streamparser
loading rexml/parsers/treeparser
loading rexml/validation/validationexception
finished loading rexml/validation/validationexception
finished loading rexml/parsers/treeparser
Unhandled Exception: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'System.Ob
ject Ruby.Eval.ivar\_defined(System.String)'.
at Ruby.Compiler.AST.PROGRAM.ExecuteMain(PEFile Assembly, String\[\] args)
at Ruby.Compiler.RubyMain.Main(String\[\] args)
Oh well! Maybe next month’s release will be ready for REXML…
