mruby

mruby

Developer(s)	Yukihiro Matsumoto et al.
Initial release	April 20, 2012; 11 years ago (2012-04-20)

Stable release	3.3.0^[1]^[2] / 14 February 2024; 16 days ago (14 February 2024)

Repository	github.com/mruby/mruby
Written in	C and Ruby
Operating system	Cross-platform
Standard(s)	ISO/IEC 30170:2012
Type	Ruby programming language interpreter
License	MIT License^[3]
Website	mruby.org

mruby is an interpreter for the Ruby programming language with the intention of being lightweight and easily embeddable.^[4]^[5] The project is headed by Yukihiro Matsumoto, with over 100 contributors currently working on the project.

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Features

mruby 1.0 supports the Ruby 2.1 core API, but none of the standard library. As well as being able to execute most basic Ruby code, mruby also features a bytecode compiler and virtual machine, as well as the ability to be easily embedded and integrated into C or C++ code, in a similar manner to Lua or Tcl.

mruby 2.0.0^[6] adds support for several Ruby 2.x methods beyond Ruby 2.1. v2.0.0 also changed to variable length bytecode instructions format.

mruby bytecode can be embedded in C code, and thus, can be compiled into a standalone executable.^[7]

mruby also aims^[4] to be compliant with the ISO/IEC 30170:2012 standard.^[8]

Examples

Calling mruby from C

#include <stdio.h>
#include <mruby.h>
#include <mruby/compile.h>

int main(void) {
    mrb_state *mrb = mrb_open();
    char code[] = "5.times { puts 'mruby is awesome!' }";

    printf("Executing Ruby code with mruby:\n");
    mrb_load_string(mrb, code);

    mrb_close(mrb);
    return 0;
}

Assuming that the mruby library and headers are installed, the program can be compiled and executed by running the following commands from the terminal:^[9]

$ cc example.c -lmruby -lm -o example
$ ./example

Precompiled Bytecode

mruby includes a minimalistic virtual machine used to execute mruby bytecode, nicknamed ritevm:

$ mrbc test.rb
$ mruby -b test.mrb

The first command compiles Ruby code to mruby bytecode, creating a file called "test.mrb", which can then be executed by appending the "-b" flag to the normal interpreter arguments.^[10]