ozpos/glimmer

Glimmer is a JRuby DSL that enables easy and efficient authoring of user-interfaces using the robust platform-independent Eclipse SWT library. Glimmer comes with built-in data-binding support to greatly facilitate synchronizing UI with domain models.

Glimmer

Glimmer is a JRuby DSL that enables easy and efficient authoring of desktop application user-interfaces. It relies on the robust platform-independent Eclipse SWT library. Glimmer comes with built-in data-binding support to greatly facilitate synchronizing UI with domain models.

Example

shell {
  text "Example"
  label {
    text "Hello World!"
  }
}.open

Getting Started

1. Download the "SWT binary and source" archive from the Eclipse site and follow their instructions. http://www.eclipse.org/swt/
2. Add swt.jar to your environment Java classpath (e.g. export CLASSPATH="/path_to_swt_jar/swt.jar")
3. Download and setup jRuby 1.5.6 (rvm install jruby -v1.5.6)
4. Install bundler (gem install bundler)
5. Install project required gems (bundle install)
6. Write a program that requires the file "lib/glimmer.rb" (or glimmer gem) and has the UI class (view) include the Glimmer module
7. Run your program with jruby (pass -J-XstartOnFirstThread option if on the Mac)

Samples

Check the "samples" folder for examples on how to write Glimmer applications.

Mac Support

In order to run Glimmer on the Mac, you need to pass an extra option to JRuby. For example: jruby -J-XstartOnFirstThread samples/hello_world.rb

Background

Ruby is a dynamically-typed object-oriented language, which provides great productivity gains due to its powerful expressive syntax and dynamic nature. While it is proven by the Ruby on Rails framework for web development, it currently lacks a robust platform-independent framework for building desktop applications. Given that Java libraries can now be utilized in Ruby code through JRuby, Eclipse technologies, such as SWT, JFace, and RCP can help fill the gap of desktop application development with Ruby.

Resources

• Eclipse Zone Tutorial
• InfoQ Article
• RubyConf 2008 Video
• Code Painter Blog

Contributors

• Annas "Andy" Al Maleh (Founder)
• Dennis Theisen

License

Copyright (c) 2011 Annas Al Maleh. See LICENSE.txt for further details.