XRuby project is now hosted on Google Code

XRuby is an open source Ruby compiler which compiles Ruby source code (.rb) to Java bytecode (.class). On last Friday I moved the source code from my local Subversion server to Google Code(code.google.com/p/xruby/), so the project is now public available (GPL license).

Although I have never announced this project, I have been working on it for more than one year. This February I made the parser public available, now the main effort is on the compiler backend (java bytecode generation). I expect to release the first stable version at the end of 2006.

So far I am not very satisfied with my progress. I have a busy day job which has nothing related to Ruby and Java, so can only manage to work on XRuby about one hour a day(except weekends and holidays). When I started the project I thought XRuby is going to be the first ruby compiler in the world. But now Gardens Point Ruby.NET has released their first alpha version, and I expect JRuby will start to do their compiler in a few months (since they have been hired by Sun to work on JRuby full time).

Anyway, the project gives me lots of fun and the implementation starts to gain momentum. It looks very promising to see the first stable release around this new year, stay tuned:)