RubyMotion

RubyMotion

RubyMotion is a toolchain that allows developers to write native iOS, Android, and macOS applications using the Ruby programming language. It provides a bridge from Ruby to the native APIs of the target platform.
RubyMotion image
ruby ios android macos crossplatform

RubyMotion: Write Native Apps with Ruby

A toolchain for building native iOS, Android, and macOS apps using Ruby, bridging the gap between Ruby and native platform APIs.

What is RubyMotion?

RubyMotion is a development tool that allows programmers to quickly develop native iOS, Android, and macOS applications using the Ruby programming language. It was created by Laurent Sansonetti and developed by HipByte.

Some key things to know about RubyMotion:

  • Allows building high-performance native apps with Ruby code, while still giving access to the full native APIs of the platform
  • Apps made with RubyMotion have small memory footprint and good performance since it compiles Ruby code down to native machine code
  • Includes bindings for many common native system libraries on each platform so Ruby developers can access native functionality
  • Makes it easy to reuse Ruby logic across platforms while still creating tailored native UI for each platform
  • Has an active community supporting its development and creating libraries/gems for it
  • Uses Ruby, an easy to learn and productive language, so developers can focus on app logic instead of complex native languages

In summary, RubyMotion allows leveraging Ruby's productivity and ease of use to build fully featured, high quality native mobile and desktop apps for major platforms.

RubyMotion Features

Features

  1. Allows writing native iOS, Android and macOS apps in Ruby
  2. Provides access to full native platform APIs
  3. Supports most Ruby gems and libraries
  4. Includes RubyMotion IDE for coding, debugging and profiling
  5. Compiles Ruby code to optimized native code
  6. Integrates with Xcode and Android Studio

Pricing

  • Subscription-Based

Pros

Write native apps in Ruby instead of Objective-C/Swift or Java/Kotlin

Leverage existing Ruby knowledge and libraries

Rapid development and prototyping

Clean and expressive Ruby syntax

Good performance via compilation to native code

Active community support

Cons

Less control compared to writing native code directly

Limited debugging capabilities

Not all native APIs are available

Smaller community than native platforms

May encounter Ruby gems not supported

Extra cost compared to free native tools


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