Are there any good solutions out there for TDD of a MacOSX Objective-c app?
EDIT: more info
I would really like something similar to rSpec from the Ruby world. Is the XCode built in stuff sufficient? I have heard that it is not. I would like something that supports Mocks, Stubs, and most/all of the test conditions supplied by rSpec (or similar test conditions).
Yes, TDD is easy to do with Xcode as it includes unit testing out of the box (OCUnit was included in Xcode 2.1). See Apple's documentation and Xcode Unit Testing Guide for closer details on how to develop and run unit tests in Xcode.
There's nothing like RSpec (yet) for Objective-C, but the xUnit-style frameworks SenTest/OCUnit (included with Xcode), Google Toolbox for Mac's unit testing additions to OCUnit and GHUnit are all very good. You can do BDD-style with them as well.
If you're really committed to RSpec, you may want to investigate MacRuby. Although it may feel a little heavy in an Objective-C project, you can load your Objective-C framework(s) and run your unit tests in RSpec via MacRuby.
Here is a post about "string calculator"-kata in Objective-C.
There is UISpec (based on Rspec) for the iPhone and iCuke (based on cucumber)
Autotesting (autoiphonetest.rb) like Paul did in his his blog is interesting.
Another good post: Test Driven Development in Objective-C with MacRuby
Personally i use GHUnit, It has a cool little testing app, and supports things like Async test out of the box. Something that in the Delegate heavy world of iPhone & mac programming is invaluable.
Also it's testing methods are named very similar to that of OCUnit, so it you choose either then decide to switch it's fairly easy.
Check out this series of blog posts for a bunch of info on unit testing mac and iphone apps.
http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/12/sample-mac-application-with-complete.html
http://cocoawithlove.com/2009/12/sample-iphone-application-with-complete.html
http://cocoawithlove.com/2010/01/high-quality-in-software-development.html
If you would really like to use Ruby, then you can try my fork of Bacon (a RSpec clone) called MacBacon, which is optimized for NSRunloop based environments. None of the others are at the time of writing.
If you'd like to keep the footprint small, or are working on iOS, I also have a port of the same code, to the Nu programming language, called NuBacon.
I still need to write some introductory blog posts, but if you feel adventurous go right ahead.
Related
This has been asked many times. Some of the answers are pretty old now. I have looked around everywhere for 2 things.This the last resort before I give up. Looking for:
Bindings that will enable GUI programming using Ruby (not Shoes) using Mavericks. I have found plenty bindings but with no activity for the past 3 or 4 years, with the exception of RubyMotion which seems very expensive while not taking advantage of Xcode features / does not have an IDE.
Way to package app for users as a regular OSX app so the user does not have to install anything by hand on OSX (if mutiplatform even better to target Windows too)
I have fallen in love with Ruby but without a means to tackle the above will be difficult to deploy for users, while I am not interested in Rails.
Feels like Rails popularity has in effect killed Ruby by putting it into a niche when it could be so much more.
Any new news on either of these 2 fronts or everything is abandoned / dead ?
Should I move on with Python / Objective-C ? (Which I like both but enjoy Ruby more)
I succesfully compiled scripts with tk, green shoes and gosu as a GUI to an executable with ocra but only have experience doing so on windows. If you want an actual, cross platform GUI try the java swing framework with jruby, here an example.
If you deploy a JAR or an executable nu further installations are needed.
I suppose you use MRI ruby now, the step to jruby is not so difficult.
require 'java'
# With the 'require' above, we can now refer to things that are part of the
# standard Java platform via their full paths.
frame = javax.swing.JFrame.new("Window") # Creating a Java JFrame
label = javax.swing.JLabel.new("Hello")
# We can transparently call Java methods on Java objects, just as if they were defined in Ruby.
frame.getContentPane.add(label) # Invoking the Java method 'getContentPane'.
frame.setDefaultCloseOperation(javax.swing.JFrame::EXIT_ON_CLOSE)
frame.pack
frame.setVisible(true)
RubyMotion is the best alternative. But if don't want to spend the money you should be able to use macruby.
Here are some resources
http://blog.phusion.nl/2010/03/12/creating-our-very-first-mac-application-with-ruby-how-exciting/
I must say that using macruby for a big project might not be a good idea. You should expect stuff breaking and few support. As of 2015, the [MacRuby page on GitHub][3] says that the project is in an indefinite hiatus due to the changes made by Apple in the Objective C garbage collection support that MacRuby depends on. They suggest using RubyMotion.
RubyMotion seems to be really good for what you want but for development the lack of a IDE is really a huge downside. Also from my experience rubymotion only comes handy if you already know the cocoa framework really well.
So my recommendation is for you to test rubymotion if you can. They give your money back in the first 30 days if you only want to try it out. So if you have the money give it a try.
If you are new to osx development and only want to develop for osx I think you should go with objective-c. The language is not that bad and you will get the best development environment available for it for free.
I want to develop a Windows application. Honestly I care little about cross-platforms for now (but still would be good)
I want to use Ruby, since it has quite a simple syntax and is so.. well, simple and easy to learn.
My application is like a "game level creator", where you can design your own level and then run it with another application which is a "game level player" by reading the project file created by the creator app. You get the idea.
Now, I got a new PC and is completely clean. Absolutely no trace of my old Ruby experiments and fails.
First of all, I will need to choose a GUI platform for my Ruby application! Can you recommend me one? I have heard of Shoes and Tk, but want to know what you think.
Have you considered IronRuby? It's an implementation of Ruby that runs on the .Net platform, which means you have access to all of the standard Windows Forms libraries, if you decide to run in Windows. http://ironruby.net/
According to david4dev, it also runs well on Mono, which makes it great for cross-platform compatibility, as the Mono platform runs on Mac OSX and Linux, as well as Windows.
Jorg W Mittag says that using the WPF (Windows Presentation Framework) is an even better option for creating GUI's since Mono has a very strong implementation of the WPF. The WPF was created to be platform agnostic and is better suited for cross-platform development over WinForms, since WinForms is tightly coupled with the Windows OS.
I recommend using Shoes out of the 2. Shoes is a nice simple way to build small applications using Ruby. The reason why Shoes is better than TK for your application is that it makes it very simple to create graphics.
Shoes is well suited to small apps and it will be quite hard to create a game creator using it.
You are probably better off using an SDL based game framework such as Rubygame . This works on Linux, Windows and OSX.
For the simple, typical editing most GUI kit will do just fine. However, for the more complicated (and especially the level creation/editing) you're mostly gonna end up using a lot of self-made rendering in DirectX/OpenGL.
I don't know a lot about Ruby though, but I'd consider GUI kits Or frameworks with that aspect in mind.
Just thought I'd share my 2 cents :)
I've been developing Windows based applications for a long time and most of my present clients still desire a desktop or client/server Windows application. Is it possible to use Ruby for such applications as opposed to its primary purpose of being a Web-programming language?
Ruby is not primarily a web programming language even though Ruby on Rails is certainly suited for web development. Ruby is a general purpose scripting language.
The FXRuby and WxRuby frameworks are the most fully featured GUI frameworks for Ruby. You can write the apps in Ruby and then generate a Windows executable. The frameworks are cross-platform, so you could also run the apps written in these on other platforms, like Linux or Mac OS X.
There are also a few other less popular approaches like QtRuby and Shoes, and you can even use IronRuby (a CLR Ruby implementation) to write a .Net application.
Ruby is a general purpose object oriented scripting language. Ruby on Rails is a web application framework. Ruby predates Rails by about ten years. Don't confuse the two.
Yes, you can. Ruby is a full scripting language. You might want to start with the Ruby language homepage to see the capabilities and libraries that are available.
However, just because you can doesn't mean that you should. Before jumping in and using Ruby for a project, see if Ruby can give you things that other languages can't or if there are any disadvantages to using Ruby.
I know this thread is old, but for future reference to anyone who's looking into options for using Ruby for a GUI app, don't use QtRuby. I had developed a project for school in about a week, fully functional and pretty, only to find out that I could not release it. There was simply no way to package and distribute the application without having your users simulate your exact environment (install all the gem dependencies, build Qt development libraries etc). I tried using:
Crate: supposedly cross-platform, but I found only 1 usage example that's written in 2008 out of ~2 hours of googling, and the example basically covers a very specific subset of applications (some ssl/https authentication gem or w/e...)
Ocra: this looks like a candidate, but it's windows-only and didn't meet my requirements, as I had to target the three primary platforms
tar2rubyscript + rubyscript2exe: I had spent most of my time trying to get this to work because I've come across many who claimed that this is the way to go for distributing GUI apps built in ruby (albeit using other toolkits, Tk/GTK/wxRuby) but it didn't work either; I was endlessly faced with a cryptic error that basically breaks Qt::UiLoader functionality, in other words, you can't load .ui sheets you create with QtDesigner so...
Yes I'm angry and frustrated honestly, because I don't see the point of creating software that you just can't release for anyone to use. Now I'm left with a deadline coming up in a week, and I just hope I make it in time porting the app to C++.
So my answer is, don't use QtRuby. At least for now.
On a mac, you can use the Ruby Cocoa lib to create (what appear to be) native applications. If you want something more cross platform then you might consider a wrapper like shoes or qt.
The Qt toolkit seems the most popular way to do it. The website is http://www.darshancomputing.com/qt4-qtruby-tutorial/
I'm currently writing a little app in a wrapper called Shoes. This seems to make it as simple as pie to create windowed apps in ruby. http://shoes.heroku.com/ is the website.
At the moment Shoes looks suitable only for small personal apps. I say this because it's author recently went AWOL and it's not clear whether it will be developed further. I'm using it to write a game log parser to generate statistics from a flight sim. It's ticking along nicely.
Ruby can be used for developing GUI applications, whether Windows specific or cross-platform.
For Windows targetted you should look at the work going on with IronRuby since they have good integration with the .NET framework overall and with Silverlight, in the event you want to do apps that can bridge web and desktop. At this point IronRuby can be used to develop for Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) or WinForms.
For cross-platform you have Ruby bindings for QT, FOX and others.
You should look at IronRuby - WPF and windows forms are both supported:
Every time I see a discussion on software development, always someone suggests or exalts the qualities of Smalltalk, be it the beautiful language constructs or the better implementation of basically everything.
So I was curious, is anybody developing in Smalltalk? can Smalltalk actually be used to develop software on the Mac? Or what is the target platform for Smalltalk? What is the poster child for this apparently fantastic but unpopular language?
Smalltalk isn't really used for GUI application development on the Mac in any major way. The only distribution that could produce native apps was Ambrai Smalltalk, and that died in beta AFAIK. Squeak is the most popular Smalltalk variant nowadays, but you will be torn limb from limb if you release a Mac OS X app that looks like Squeak. It's worth checking out if you're interested in learning the language (which is still unique in a lot of ways), but you're probably not going to be developing OS X apps with it.
If you would like something similar, check out MacRuby. Ruby is as close as you can get to Smalltalk without actually being Smalltalk — total object orientation, dynamic, 100% message-based, heavy use of blocks, etc. MacRuby is an implementation being developed by Apple specifically for making OS X applications.
Mac OS X's native Objective-C is also heavily Smalltalk-inspired (it's basically a big chunk of Smalltalk's object system and syntax bolted onto C), but owing to its extreme C compatibility, it falls a little further from the tree.
Take a look at fscript, which is essentially a smalltalk-like language for Objective C.
Luis: do you want to do desktop application for Mac ? or you want to program in Mac? If you want to do a web application for example, you can perfectly use Squeak or Pharo. If you want to do native mac applications, you should see the Mars project for Squeak:
http://smallworks.com.ar/productos/Mars
As an example, most of the Pharo users and developers are under Mac.
http://www.pharo-project.org/home
download and try it at least for a couple of hours!
I still believe that Squeak is well worth investigating, if only to broaden your mind a little. As for the poster child for Smalltalk, it's probably Seaside.
Squeak isn't its UI. You can configure Morphic heavily (look at how similar Pharo's is to OSX, for instance). Or you can just use native widgets with wxSqueak.
This deserves some attention:
"Objective-Smalltalk was created specifically to solve practical problems that have been encountered in 25 years of Objective-C and Smalltalk use, but with a theoretical framework that solves many of these problems elegantly and minimally, rather than by bolting on special feature after special feature."
http://objective.st/
I'm sorry if this question is noob-ish but I'm not having much luck with Google. Can Ruby be used for UI based Windows apps? I'm not looking for a Rails app, just Ruby.
Thanks
You have couple of options.
Use Gtk Ruby which works on Windows as well (http://ruby-gnome2.sourceforge.jp/).
You can use WxRuby or Tk.
You can use JRuby and Swing.In fact there are high level libraries which can help you there, such as (http://monkeybars.rubyforge.org/)
Yes, but the experience will vary depending on how you hook up the UI. TK or gtk, wxRuby, ruby shoes (not sure how alive that one is right now), Qt (which is cool) and fox (aka fxRuby) are some of the options. If you like to hurt yourself, you can hook directly to Win32 libraries, but I doubt you'll want to.
Additionally, if you target the nascent IronRuby, you can use WinForms or WPF.
I also prefer wxRuby. It looks great, uses native components, yet is cross-platform. On the Ruby On Windows blog there is a great write-up of how to get started. It helped me a lot.
You bet. wxRuby is what I use, but others use GTK. wxRuby also works on Linux which is where I am writing a program, but it should suit your needs. You can install it using
gem install wxruby
You could check out wxRuby..
Depends what kind of Window app are you going to implement. If this is your own pet project, then definitely you can try WxRuby or GTK. There is no risk here.
However if this is going to be serious, commercial windows app then you have to think twice. It is really worth using Ruby? It is great language. I use it on daily basis. But for a Windows app, C# integration with the whole environment is hard to beat.
check out Shoooes!