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Mac OS X, being a modern operating system, has a rich development environment in Cocoa. Based on Objective-C, a highly-object-oriented language blending C 1 and Smalltalk, Cocoa provides an extensive class hierarchy not only for the user interface, but nearly the entire operating system. Better yet, the development community has made available lots of third-party code, enabling you to make your Cocoa apps that much better.

Mac OS X, being a Unix-flavored operating system, has many dynamic scripting languages available. My favorite these days is Ruby, a fully-object-oriented language blending Perl, Smalltalk, and others. The syntax is expressive without being cryptic, and the built-in library is extensive. Better yet, the extent of third-party code available is nearly as broad as one could hope for. Ruby has been used for code as small as simple command line utilities, and as large as full e-commerce websites, using frameworks like Rails.

Objective-C has at its fingertips the whole of the Mac OS X UI and operating system, but it’s a compiled language, which makes exploring and prototyping slow and sometimes cumbersome. Ruby is interpreted 2, which makes it fast in which to develop, but being written with broad platform support in mind, it doesn’t have direct access to the rich Cocoa environment.

If only there were a way to get the best of both worlds….

You got your Ruby in my Cocoa!

Enter MacRuby. Simply put, it’s a Ruby environment written in Objective-C which exposes the whole of Cocoa to the scripts it runs. Now, hacking Cocoa is as simple as firing up irb.

Mac OS X ships with a conventional Ruby install, so MacRuby is designed to live along side it without disturbing it. Out of the box, the various MacRuby binaries (ruby, irb, etc.) are installed with a mac prefix (macruby, macirb, etc.), which leads to confusion when you run the conventional Ruby by mistake.

If only there were a way to have both installed, and switch between them….

You got your Cocoa in my Ruby! Wait, no, you didn’t

Enter RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. Simply put, it lets you install multiple Rubies on one system, keeping them separate, and allows you to switch between them with a single command. Note that “Rubies” here means not only different versions of Ruby, but different flavors like MacRuby as well.

The ins and outs of installing and setting up RVM are beyond the scope of this post. I’m going to assume you’ve already done so. Make sure you have an up-to-date install of RVM by running rvm get head followed by rvm reload; otherwise, you may not get the most recent version of MacRuby.

You put the Cocoa in the Ruby and you drink it all up

You install MacRuby via RVM the same way you would any other Ruby:

  $ rvm install macruby

RVM downloads MacRuby, runs its installer, then perform its usual magic to make which version of Ruby you’re running transparent. In other words, MacRuby is your Ruby:

  $ rvm use macruby
  $ ruby -v
  MacRuby 0.9 (ruby 1.9.2) [universal-darwin10.0, x86_64]

Okay, so MacRuby is your Ruby. But what about the Cocoa part?

This is where MacRuby really shines – irb gives you interactive access to Cocoa:

  $ irb
  irb(main):001:0> framework 'Cocoa'
  => true
  irb(main):002:0> NSSound.soundNamed('Submarine').play
  => true

For maximum Soviet sub captain with a Scottish accent goodness, turn your volume up first.


  1. Once described as “combining the power of assembly language with the complexity of assembly language”. 

  2. Not entirely, but the distinction is beyond the scope of this post.