Matz's Ruby Interpreter or Ruby MRI (also called CRuby) is an

implementation Implementation is the realization of an application, execution of a plan, idea, scientific modelling, model, design, specification, Standardization, standard, algorithm, policy, or the Management, administration or management of a process or Goal ...

of the

Ruby programming language Ruby is a general-purpose programming language. It was designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity. In Ruby, everything is an object, including primitive data types. It was developed in the mid-1990s by Yukihiro "Mat ...

named after Ruby creator Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz"). Until the specification of the Ruby language in 2012, the MRI implementation was considered the ''de facto'' reference, especially since an independent attempt to create the specification (

RubySpec The RubySpec project aimed to write a complete executable specification for the Ruby programming language. This project contains specs that describe Ruby language syntax and standard library classes. The project contains two main components: * th ...

) had failed. Starting with Ruby 1.9, and continuing with Ruby 2.x and above, the official Ruby interpreter has been YARV ("Yet Another Ruby VM"). Ruby 1.8 is the last version that uses MRI.

History

Yukihiro Matsumoto ("Matz") started working on Ruby on February 24, 1993, and released it to the public in 1995. "Ruby" was named as a gemstone because of a joke within Matsumoto's circle of friends alluding to the name of the

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

programming language. The 1.8 branch has been maintained until June 2013, and 1.8.7 releases have been released since April 2008. This version provides bug fixes, but also many Ruby feature enhancements. The

project has independently created a large test suite that captures 1.8.6/1.8.7/1.9 behavior as a reference conformance tool. Ruby MRI 1.9.2 passed over 99% of RubySpec., MRI Ruby 2.2 crashed on one of the tests. As a result of the limited uptake by the MRI developers, RubySpec project has been discontinued as of end of 2014.

Licensing terms

Prior to release 1.9.3, the Ruby interpreter and libraries were distributed as dual-licensed free and

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use and view the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open source model is a decentrali ...

software, under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

or the Ruby License. In release 1.9.3, Ruby's License has been changed from a dual license with

GPLv2 The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or copyleft, ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was th ...

to a dual license with the 2-clause BSD license.

Operating systems

Ruby MRI is available for the following

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

s (supported Ruby versions can be different): *

Acorn The acorn is the nut (fruit), nut of the oaks and their close relatives (genera ''Quercus'', ''Notholithocarpus'' and ''Lithocarpus'', in the family Fagaceae). It usually contains a seedling surrounded by two cotyledons (seedling leaves), en ...

RISC OS RISC OS () is an operating system designed to run on ARM architecture, ARM computers. Originally designed in 1987 by Acorn Computers of England, it was made for use in its new line of ARM-based Acorn Archimedes, Archimedes personal computers an ...

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

BeOS BeOS is a discontinued operating system for personal computers that was developed by Be Inc. It was conceived for the company's BeBox personal computer which was released in 1995. BeOS was designed for multitasking, multithreading, and a graph ...

Haiku is a type of short form poetry that originated in Japan. Traditional Japanese haiku consist of three phrases composed of 17 Mora (linguistics), morae (called ''On (Japanese prosody), on'' in Japanese) in a 5, 7, 5 pattern; that include a ''kire ...

DOS DOS (, ) is a family of disk-based operating systems for IBM PC compatible computers. The DOS family primarily consists of IBM PC DOS and a rebranded version, Microsoft's MS-DOS, both of which were introduced in 1981. Later compatible syste ...

(32-bit) *

IBM i IBM i (the ''i'' standing for ''integrated'') is an operating system developed by IBM for IBM Power Systems. It was originally released in 1988 as OS/400, as the sole operating system of the IBM AS/400 line of systems. It was renamed to i5/OS in 2 ...

* Internet Tablet OS *

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

95/98/2000/2003/NT/XP/Vista/7/8/10 * Microsoft

Windows CE Windows CE, later known as Windows Embedded CE and Windows Embedded Compact, is a discontinued operating system developed by Microsoft for mobile and embedded devices. It was part of the Windows Embedded family and served as the software foun ...

MorphOS MorphOS is an AmigaOS-like operating system designed for Power and PowerPC based computers. The core, based on the Quark microkernel, is proprietary, although several libraries and other parts are open source, such as the Ambient desktop. The p ...

OS/2 OS/2 is a Proprietary software, proprietary computer operating system for x86 and PowerPC based personal computers. It was created and initially developed jointly by IBM and Microsoft, under the leadership of IBM software designer Ed Iacobucci, ...

OpenVMS OpenVMS, often referred to as just VMS, is a multi-user, multiprocessing and virtual memory-based operating system. It is designed to support time-sharing, batch processing, transaction processing and workstation applications. Customers using Op ...

Syllable A syllable is a basic unit of organization within a sequence of speech sounds, such as within a word, typically defined by linguists as a ''nucleus'' (most often a vowel) with optional sounds before or after that nucleus (''margins'', which are ...

Symbian OS Symbian is a discontinued mobile operating system (OS) and computing platform designed for smartphones. It was originally developed as a proprietary software OS for personal digital assistants in 1998 by the Symbian Ltd. consortium. Symbian OS ...

* Blue Gene/L compute node kernel * Most flavors of

Unix Unix (, ; trademarked as UNIX) is a family of multitasking, multi-user computer operating systems that derive from the original AT&T Unix, whose development started in 1969 at the Bell Labs research center by Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, a ...

This list may not be exhaustive. ;PowerPC64 performance: Since version 2.2.1, Ruby MRI performance on PowerPC64 was improved.

Limitations

Commonly noted limitations include: ;Backward compatibility: Version 1.9 and 1.8 have slight semantic differences. The release of Ruby 2.0 sought to avoid such a conflict between different versions. Threaded programs cannot use more than a single CPU core due to the

Global interpreter lock A global interpreter lock (GIL) is a mechanism used in computer-language Interpreter (computing), interpreters to synchronize the execution of Threads (computer science), threads so that only one native thread (per process) can execute basic ope ...

References

External links