Re: Ruby/Python - mixed language apps, and garbage collection

FROM : Graham Perks
DATE : Mon Nov 19 14:12:26 2007

Thanks, Bill.

I looked for "embedding" documentation but all I came up with was 
people embedding the runtime, Tiger-style. Similarly, your comment 
below is implying I'm on Tiger, right? I would be targeting Leopard so 
the Python/Ruby runtime is already compiled and in place, isn't it?

On Nov 18, 2007, at 11:32 AM, Bill Bumgarner wrote:

> (Technically, there really isn't a reason why you couldn't enable GC 
> for RubyCocoa and PyObjC.  You would need to recompile the bridges 
> and Python/Ruby interpreters with GC enabled.


In my head I would like to take an existing Objective-C application, 
and switch over to developing it in Python or Ruby. I'd be subclassing 
ObjC, creating objects on both sides of the bridge - all the stuff you 
do in a regular single-language application. Is this beyond what the 
bridge is intended for? If it is, that's OK, I'd just like to know!

> Objective-C Garbage Collection cannot be enabled in Ruby/Python 
> based Cocoa applications.  Specifically, you can't use Objective-C 
> objects on the scripting language side of the bridges.


So I can't pass NSString objects? I am limited to ints & floats and 
the like? GC on the Python/Ruby side is enabled, right - I don't have 
to start managing memory in Python do I?

Thanks,
Graham Perks.