faq.txt

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title:      FAQ
created_at: 2009-06-01 20:54 -05:00
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h2. What is MacRuby?

MacRuby is a Ruby implementation running directly on top of Mac OS X Open Source core technologies such as the Objective-C common runtime and garbage collector as well as the CoreFoundation framework. 


h2. What is HotCocoa?

HotCocoa is a thin, idiomatic Ruby layer that sits above Cocoa and other frameworks. HotCocoa is included with the MacRuby distributions. More specifically, HotCocoa is a mapping framework using intelligent defaults.  

h2. How do I get started using MacRuby?

You have two options described on the right hand side of this page. 
You can install MacRuby using the provided installer, or build and from source.

You will find links to various presentations and HOWTOs in the "Documentation":/documentation.html section.

h2. How can I contribute to MacRuby?

You can contribute in a lot of different ways:

<ul class="faq">
  <li>Report issues, bugs, fixes, suggestions using our "ticketing system":http://www.macruby.org/trac/newticket.</li>
  <li>Write tutorials and/or recipes (shorter tutorial) for this website.</li>
  <li>Write or translate sample code that would be bundled and shipped with MacRuby.</li>
  <li>Help with the "RubySpec":http://rubyspec.org/ 1.8 to Ruby 1.9 transition effort.</li>
  <li>Help the specs work using RubySpec and MacRuby's specific specs.</li>
  <li>Port C extensions to the "Ruby FFI API":http://kenai.com/projects/ruby-ffi/pages/Home. (There is a plan to support C extensions in the future, but FFI performance will be better)</li>
  <li>Check the TODO file (in the source code) containing lower level things pending tasks do.</li>
</ul>