Using the Ruby Distribution
This page provides important information for users of the Ice for Ruby distribution.
On this page:
Overview of the Ice for Ruby Distribution
Ice for Ruby is available as a collection of Ruby gems. Each package provides the following components:
- Ice extension for Ruby
- Standard Slice files
- Slice-to-Ruby compiler (
slice2rb
)
Installing the Ice for Ruby Distribution
Linux and macOS users can install Ice for Ruby using this command:
sudo gem install zeroc-ice --version=3.6.5
This gem builds Ice for Ruby from source and supports Ruby 1.8 or later.
Windows users can install a binary gem instead:
gem install zeroc-ice-x64-mingw (Windows 64-bit) gem install zeroc-ice-x86-mingw (Windows 32-bit)
These gems require Ruby 2.4.
Using Ice for Ruby
The installation process automatically adds the Ice modules to Ruby's package directory and adds the Slice-to-Ruby compiler (slice2rb
) to a directory that's likely already in your executable search path. To verify that Ice is installed, execute these commands:
irb irb> require 'Ice' irb> Ice::getSliceDir()
The output of getSliceDir
shows where the standard Slice files have been installed.
Ruby 1.8
Users of Ruby 1.8 must add the -rubygems
option when starting the interpreter with irb
or ruby
:
irb -rubygems irb> require 'Ice' irb> Ice::getSliceDir()
The Ice manual provides a complete description of the Ruby mapping, including the options for generating Ruby code from Slice definitions.
Using the sample programs
Sample programs are provided in a separate GitHub repository. You can browse this repository to see build and usage instructions for all supported programming languages. Simply clone this repository and use its 3.6 branch:
git clone -b 3.6 https://github.com/zeroc-ice/ice-demos.git cd ice-demos