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Redcar is moving to JRuby
By DBL | August 23, 2009
After a long struggle with our current platform, we have decided that it is best for the future of Redcar if we port it to JRuby. This will mean switching to another GUI toolkit, which we have identified as SWT. There are a lot of reasons for this (anyone who is interested can check the mailing list for details), but we expect the move to result in
- improved stability,
- more accessible source code,
- easier packaging,
- better cross-platform support.
We’re going to try and get this over with as quickly as possible, I’ll be pulling double shifts and Silvio and Henrik and a few others are jumping in too.
If you’d like to be involved in Redcar, this is a great opportunity to get started and help out, so please drop by the mailing list or IRC channel.
See you on the other side! 
Topics: development, jruby port |
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:27 pm
A characteristically courageous move, Dan
Does this mean you’ll have to change the strapline ‘a programmer’s editor for gnome’ to something else?
August 23rd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
not a best solution ever, but good luck guys!
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
A horrible solution in my opinion.. Now you are just one more Java editor, with all the problems they have like horrible desktop integration, bad font rendering on Linux and general slowness. All these problems and without the advanced features the other java editor have…
By the way, why not using a more decent toolkit, like QtJamby for Java? Or even QtRuby?
Qt is very fast, has much better desktop integration on all platforms it supports, and its very easy to program too! I would love to help you with code if you reconsider it..
August 23rd, 2009 at 2:34 pm
By the way: http://github.com/nmerouze/qtjruby-core/tree/master
August 23rd, 2009 at 3:32 pm
Hi guys.
Thanks @matt. I guess so. A Programmer’s Editor for Linux?
@eveel thanks for your support.
@Paulo We have chosen SWT partly so that the font-rendering will be identical to native applications. I hope that we can avoid too much slowness, but yes that’s a risk - particularly with startup. I’m not aware of any compromises we will have to make with desktop integration.
In general I don’t think users care what toolkit we use. The choice of toolkit is not a ‘feature’. I hope users will care that we are more stable, and I certainly care that we will be on a more mature and better supported platform.
And finally, Redcar is not and never will be a Java editor: it is a RUBY editor.
August 23rd, 2009 at 5:47 pm
A good choice IMHO, and I agree that a toolkit “is not a feature”.
I’m looking forward with excitement to this new development and perhaps I’ll even be able to contribute something.
August 23rd, 2009 at 11:32 pm
Compare Netbeans with Textmate on a Mac and you will see that toolkit can make a *HUGE* difference on user experience…
Anyway, I don’t care anymore, as I won’t look at redcar again, I wish you good luck
August 24th, 2009 at 4:50 am
I think it sounds like a great move. I’ll address a Paulo’s comment:
Paulo: SWT is actually a *native* toolkit, and by using it you have to make very few sacrifices for desktop L&F and integration. In fact, on Linux, SWT actually uses GTK, so things will look and feel at least as nice as GTK. But even better…SWT on Windows uses Windows components, and on OS X uses Cocoa. By moving to JRuby + SWT, you have the best possibility of matching native L&F across platforms with a single codebase.
Congratulations on the move…the JRuby team is standing by to help support you, and there are several others in the JRuby community who have built commercial/production apps using JRuby+SWT that can help too!
August 24th, 2009 at 6:03 am
Great move, SWT is a great toolkit and jruby IMHO is gonna be really important in a near future.
ps: do not feed the troll
August 24th, 2009 at 7:09 am
As a side note: Comparing Netbeans to TextMate is like comparing oranges and boots.
Netbeans is a Swing application. Important difference.
August 25th, 2009 at 11:52 pm
Good luck! I’m with the others that the toolkit is important to the user experience, and Java is something I’m staying from.
September 4th, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Hey Guys,
I think your move it quite wise. Because one of my reasons I don’t use my most loved editors Scribes and Redcar is that I can’t use them on Windows at work. And using two different editors for programming sucks.
So Emacs still rules for me. Redcar could be an (the) alternative in the future!
September 6th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
[...] is terrific progress for our JRuby/SWT port. JavaMateView is the syntax highlighting editor component, which is the core of Redcar. We can [...]
September 13th, 2009 at 11:59 am
I deeply hope to be proved wrong. This move smells like a cul-de-sac