futruby

FutRuby is a Japanese Ruby implementation, specifically a Ahead-of-Time (AOT) compiler for Ruby. It is designed to compile Ruby code to native machine code, allowing for direct execution without interpretation. This approach aims to improve the performance of Ruby applications.

FutRuby's development is led by the company NTT Communications' subsidiary, NTT Software's ex-employees, who are also involved in other open source projects. The project's focus on Speed, as shown by its name "Fut" meaning speed in Japanese, reflects its priority. FutRuby is primarily intended for use in COTS (Commercial-Off-The-Shelf) systems development and other scenarios requiring high performance.

The major appeal of FutRuby is its potential for speed improvements. Traditional Ruby scripts suffer from speed penalties due to interpretation, which can be significant, especially in scenarios involving long-running computations. An AOT compiler like FutRuby is expected to fix this limitation. Understandably, its direct compilation performance is the main selling point.

However, FutRuby has received mixed feedback and low adoption rates within the open-source community. Mainstream acceptance of FutRuby has not been significantly widespread. This disparity mainly results from market preference and, arguably, the widely-used JRuby platform, which itself is well-established.

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