Dido Sevilla wrote:
> On 8/23/06, kandlinger / gmx.de <kandlinger / gmx.de> wrote:
> > Hello, I am currently developing a webshop which uses a c/c++ shared
> > object/dynamic link library for some functions. Currently I am
> > evaluating which technology I should use. As I've got  a completely
> > free choice I was thinking of Java Server Faces or Ruby on Rails. I
> > never used Ruby on Rails before, so my question is: How big is the
> > support of Ruby to access a c/c++ shared object/dynamic link library of
> > which i only got a c/c++ header file ?
>
> Actually, it's incredibly easy to write C extensions for Ruby,
> compared to many other languages. The file README.EXT in the Ruby
> source distribution explains how this can be done, and compared to
> languages such as Perl (which uses a small domain-specific language)
> and Java (JNI is also messy), it is quite simple.  Which is why too
> many people don't consider Ruby's general slowness that big a problem;
> it is easy enough to write C extensions for speed-critical portions of
> the code.

Also, it is important to ask if you are on windows or linux/bsd/mac os
x.  It is significantly harder to extend ruby on windows than on one of
the unixy systems.