At the moment the predominant language for developing phone apps is Java - followed at some distance by C/C++ and, if Windows Phone 7 takes off, C#.

Thus mobile phone development often means having to leave your favourite language behind. Now you can begin to experiment with Ruby based apps for Android. Ruby expert Daniel Jackoway has used JRuby to create a development package for Android - Ruboto.

The project is judged to be at the pre-beta stage, version 0.0.1, at the moment but you can use it to create simple apps. Using JRuby, a version of Ruby that runs on the Java Virtual Machine (JVM), makes the task a lot simpler than trying to port a non JVM based language.

The project was part of the Ruby Summer of Code - an event which aims to get  students involved with writing real code. The project has an active mailing list and code downloads are available on GitHub. Currently you can write Activities, Broadcast Receivers and Services.The target for the future is to add more classes and get rid of the XML.

As is the case for most open source projects the documentation is almost non-existent (another thing to be fixed in the next release) but there are some simple examples that show how it all works.

At the moment Ruboto is a small project but one that looks as if it is worth supporting.

Ruboto Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/ruboto

The projects home page:http://ruboto.org/

GitHub: http://github.com/ruboto

Blog:First Ruboto Release!

Further Reading

Introduction to Android 2 application development

JRuby 1.5.0

Ruby on Rails for Microsoft Developers

Metaprogramming Ruby

Ruby: Visual QuickStart Guide

Beginning Ruby: From Novice to Professional

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