* What's Ruby

Ruby is the interpreted scripting language for quick and
easy object-oriented programming.  It has many features to
process text files and to do system management tasks (as in
Perl).  It is simple, straight-forward, and extensible.


* Features of Ruby

  + Simple Syntax
  + *Normal* Object-Oriented features(ex. class, method calls)
  + *Advanced* Object-Oriented features(ex. Mix-in, Singleton-method)
  + Operator Overloading
  + Exception Handling
  + Iterators and Closures
  + Garbage Collection
  + Dynamic Loading of Object files(on some architecture)
  + Highly Portable(works on many UNIX machines, and on DOS,
    Windows, Mac, BeOS etc.)


* How to get Ruby

The Ruby distribution files can be found in the following FTP site:

  ftp://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/

The latest source code of this version series can be checked out
through SVN with the following command:

  $ svn co http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/branches/ruby_1_8/

The trunk of the Ruby source tree can be checked out with the
following command:

  $ svn co http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/trunk/ ruby

There are some other branches under development.  Try the following
command and see the list of branches:

  $ svn ls http://svn.ruby-lang.org/repos/ruby/branches/


* Ruby home-page

The URL of the Ruby home-page is:

   http://www.ruby-lang.org/


* Mailing list

There is a mailing list to talk about Ruby.
To subscribe this list, please send the following phrase

  subscribe YourFirstName YourFamilyName
e.g.
        subscribe Joseph Smith

in the mail body (not subject) to the address <ruby-talk-ctl@ruby-lang.org>.


* How to compile and install

This is what you need to do to compile and install Ruby:

  1. If ./configure does not exist or is older than configure.in,
     run autoconf to (re)generate configure.

  2. Run ./configure, which will generate config.h and Makefile.

     Some C compiler flags may be added by default depending on your
     environment.  Specify optflags=.. and warnflags=.. as necessary
     to override them.

  3. Edit defines.h if you need.  Usually this step will not be needed.

  4. Remove comment mark(#) before the module names from ext/Setup (or
     add module names if not present), if you want to link modules
     statically.

     If you don't want to compile non static extension modules
     (probably on architectures which does not allow dynamic loading),
     remove comment mark from the line "#option nodynamic" in
     ext/Setup.

  5. Run make.

  6. Optionally, run 'make test' to check whether the compiled Ruby
     interpreter works well.  If you see the message "test succeeded",
     your ruby works as it should (hopefully).

  7. Run 'make install'

     You may have to be a super user to install ruby.

If you fail to compile ruby, please send the detailed error report with
the error log and machine/OS type, to help others.


* Copying

See the file COPYING.


* The Author

Feel free to send comments and bug reports to the author.  Here is the 
author's latest mail address:

  matz@netlab.jp

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created at: Thu Aug  3 11:57:36 JST 1995
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