Looking at the code, it is based on RubyToAnsiC<p><a href="http://ruby2c.rubyforge.org/" rel="nofollow">http://ruby2c.rubyforge.org/</a><p>A nice introduction:<p><a href="http://ruby2c.rubyforge.org/svn/ruby_to_c/propaganda/Ruby2C.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://ruby2c.rubyforge.org/svn/ruby_to_c/propaganda/Ruby2C....</a>
Note, the latest release is from 2008.<p>Edit: "Do you run the Arduino development tool chain on an <i>obscure (i.e., non-OS X) platform</i>?" is a gratuitously condescending in my opinion. Since when's OS X the default/most popular/whatever platform for doing GCC development?
Might be nice for prototyping. I've never been a big fan of the Arduino programming language. It's a thin veneer over C that insulates newbies from "scary" things like port i/o bit twiddling, while not really moving the dial on language expressiveness or presenting a familiar face. Ruby has a shot at both of these.<p>That said -- this is pretty much unimaginable for my current embedded development projects, where C compiler tricks have been the name of the game for some time now. Add a feature, exceed the 8K program memory limit, find something to optimize, repeat. Injecting a Ruby-to-C compiler into this loop would be madness.
I can't find a single reference to memory management, which is a really bad sign for a project using small chips. If I can't guarantee that the loaded program will not overflow, what's the point?