Setup

We recommend you start your developing by running C:\path\to\Merlin\Main\Languages\Ruby\Scripts\Dev.bat. This batch file sets up the path, various environment variables, and aliases, which makes it easy to do builds and run tests.

It is recommended to setup a shortcut to Dev.bat on the desktop that you can just click to quickly get the pre-configured environment. To do this, create a shortcut on the Desktop to cmd.exe (where c:\github\ironruby is the root of your GIT repo) looking like CmdShortcut.png at http://www.ironruby.net/Support/Images. The values of the text fields should be like this:

Target: C:\Windows\System32\cmd.exe /k "c:\path\to\Merlin\Main\Languages\Ruby\Scripts\Dev.bat"

Start in: c:\path\to\Merlin\Main\Languages\Ruby

Understanding the folder layout

This is what the folder structure of the source repo looks like. Aliases for going to specific folders are shown like this.

• Root (Referred to as c:\path\to at various places on this wiki)
  • Merlin
    • Main r
      • Languages
        • IronPython
        • Ruby rb – Contains Ruby.sln
          • Libraries.LCA_RESTRICTED – The C# sources for the IronRuby core library
          • Libs – The standard Ruby libraries specific to IronRuby
          • Ruby – The C# sources of the IronRuby compiler and runtime
          • Scripts – Contains dev.bat, irtests.bat, etc
            • bin – Contains igem.bat, etc that are part of the release package
          • Tests – IronRuby tests for .NET interop
    • External.LCA_RESTRICTED
      • Languages
        • IronRuby
          • mspec mspc
            • ironruby-tags
            • rubyspec
        • Ruby
          • redist-libs
    • Users
      • [username] – User-specific Dev.bat
  • ndp – Acronym for .Net Developer Platform. This contains the components that will ship with the .NET Frameworks.
    • fx
      • src
        • Core
          • Microsoft
            • Scripting – Contains Microsoft.Scripting.Core.csproj

Command-line aliases and scripts

Dev.bat sets up a number of aliases for common tasks like building and running the tests. See c:\path\to\Merlin\Main\Scripts\Bat\Alias.txt for the full list of aliases. Its also includes the scripts folder c:\path\to\Merlin\Main\Languages\Ruby\Scripts in the path. A few of the most useful commands are:

• rb – Go to the Ruby sources folder
• brbd – Building the Debug configuration
• rbx – Run ir.exe
• mspec – Running specific RubySpec tests
• irtests – Running the the full set of tests that are required to pass after Modifying the sources

See the other task-specific pages on this wiki for the aliases and scripts specific to those tasks.