Rubinius is an implementation of the Ruby programming language.

Rubinius includes a bytecode virtual machine, parser, bytecode compiler, garbage collector, and just-in-time (JIT) native machine code compiler. The Ruby core library is written almost entirely in Ruby. Rubinius provides the same standard libraries as Matz's Ruby implementation (MRI). Rubinius also provides C-API compatibility for native C extensions.

Rubinius currently is compatible with Ruby version 1.8.7. Support for Ruby version 1.9.2 is coming soon.

Rubinius runs on Mac OS X and many Unix/Linux operating systems. Support for Microsoft Windows is coming soon.

Most popular Ruby applications, like Rails, run on Rubinius.

Rubinius uses the BSD license. See LICENSE for details.

To install Rubinius, use the following steps:

1. Ensure that MRI 1.8.7+, rubygems, rake, and git are installed
2. git clone git://github.com/rubinius/rubinius.git
3. cd rubinius
4. ./configure --prefix=/path/to/install/dir
5. rake install

When the install process finishes, follow the directions printed to the terminal to add the Rubinius executable (bin) directory to your PATH.

For more information about building and running Rubinius, run rake docs.

Rubinius can be installed using the Ruby Version Manager (RVM) project.

To install Rubinius with RVM, use the following steps:

1. Ensure the latest RVM is installed
2. rvm install rbx-head

To use Rubinius in the current shell session, run:

rvm use rbx

To make Rubinius the default interpreter in new shells, run:

rvm use rbx --default

The documentation for RVM is available at:

https://rvm.beginrescueend.com

Rubinius comes with RubyGems built-in. To install a gem, run the following:

rbx -S gem install <gem_name>

After installing Rubinius, run rbx docs to access the built-in documentation at any time.

Please file tickets for bugs or problems. The issue tracker is:

http://github.com/rubinius/rubinius/issues

The Rubinius team welcomes contributions. Run rake docs and see the "Contributing" page.