README

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RubyJS - Ruby to Javascript Compiler
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COPYRIGHT

  Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 by Michael Neumann (mneumann@ntecs.de).
  All rights reserved.

ABOUT

  RubyJS translates Ruby code into Javascript code. NOTE that it executes
  the Ruby code before it translates it into Javascript. This has the
  advantage of being able to (mis-)use all of Ruby's meta-programming
  tricks in the global scope (i.e. for defining classes and methods, NOT
  within methods!).  This fork adds several nifty features.

REQUIREMENTS

  * Ruby >= 1.8.6
  * ParseTree >= 2.1.1 

MAPPING

  The mapping from Ruby objects (left) to Javascript values (right) are
  given below. 

  true          -> true (class Boolean)
  false         -> false (class Boolean)
  nil           -> nil (a special variable!)
  1, 1.2        -> Javascript Number (unboxed)
  "String"      -> immutable Javascript String (unboxed)
  /regexp/      -> /regexp/ (unboxed)
  [array]       -> [array] (unboxed)
  {hash}        -> Javascript Hash object (unboxed, but indirect)
  iterator      -> function (unboxed) 
  1..2          -> custom Range object

BUGS

  --
  Debug mode sometimes generates code that does not run!  

  --
  Spidermonkey doesn't run all tests.

TODO

  --
  Issue a warning whenever a destructive Ruby string method like gsub!
  is used. The reason behind this warning is that, due to efficience
  reasons, Ruby strings (which are mutable) are mapped to immutable
  Javascript strings.

  --
  Command-line switch that doesn't call methods for some operators.
  Most important ones are "+", "-" and "/". This is of course an unsafe
  operation as you could define a method "+" in your own class. For
  heavy math operations, this of course increases performance a lot!

  --
  Command-line switch that removes unused methods. This is possible, as
  we record the names of all (possibly) called methods. This of course
  disables send() support. This switch has the potential to reduce the
  size of the generated Javascript significantly (which also reduces
  memory consumption on the client side). For this to work, we have to
  generate a call chain, which method name calls which other method
  names. This works only on method names, as we can't infer the used
  classes.

  --
  Command-line switch that disables the generation of name-information
  used by methods like send(), instance_variables(), methods() or
  respond_to?(). This makes it hard to decompile the Javascript code
  back to Ruby or assign meaningful names.

LIMITATIONS

  --
  Module's are mapped to Classes for now.

  --
  You can't inherit from core classes like Array, String, Regexp and so
  on. It's easy to allow by adding one further indirection, e.g. in that
  on object creation an attribute "m" is assigned, which contains a hash
  of all methods of that object, and on method call use "obj.m.method".
  As long as this limitation is no problem, I go the way via prototypes,
  which should be slightly more efficient.

  --
  You are not allowed to redefine the classes name method:

    class MyClass
      def self.name
        # NOT ALLOWED!!!
      end
    end

  The same is true for other methods like ancestors, superclass,
  instance_methods, methods. But you wouldn't do that anyways in Ruby,
  so that's no big restriction!

  --
  Constant assignment inside methods is forbidden. This is due to
  using static constant lookup. Constant assignment inside the class
  scope or module scope is not affected, as this is executed by the 
  Ruby interpreter.
  Constants are either inlined in the case it is a value type (Fixnum, Float)
  or a reference is generated (i.e. a variable holding it's value + a name).
  References are only generated on demand, i.e. only when a constant is
  accessed. 

  --
  +break+ inside of loops cannot have arguments in RubyJS:

    # RubyJS
    while true
      break 1  # => CompileTime Error
    end

  This could be accomplished, by introducing a "return loop"
  variable for each while loop, and setting this variable
  in "break".

  A loop break cannot occur as expression. This could be accomplished
  by using a throw instead of break and surrounding the loop by a catch.

  The same applies for +next+!

  -- 
  Methods can be called regardless of their privacy (private, protected)