I finally got around to learning sufficient ruby to write a Mini Axon in Ruby - which means there is a basic Kamaelia core in Ruby available now. This means the following code is valid Ruby code and the components work in exactly the same way as Python based Kamaelia components:

class Producer < Component
   @@name = "Producer"
   def initialize(message)
      super
      @message = message
   end
   def main
      loop do
         yield 1
         send @message, "outbox"
         showboxes if $debug
      end
   end
end

class Consumer < Component
   @@name = "Consumer"
   def main
      count = 0
      loop do
         yield 1
         count = count +1
         if dataReady("inbox")
            data = recv("inbox")
            print data, " ", count, "\n"
         end
      end
   end
end

p = Producer.new("Hello World")
c = Consumer.new()
postie = Postman.new(p, "outbox", c, "inbox")

myscheduler = Scheduler.new()
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(p)
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(c)
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(postie)

run(myscheduler)

(yes, I bought 2 ruby books at pycon uk, so shoot me :-) )

This compares fairly well with the equivalent python mini-axon code:

class Producer(component):
    def __init__(self, message):
        super(Producer, self).__init__()
        self.message = message
    def main(self):
        while 1:
            yield 1
            self.send(self.message, "outbox")

class Consumer(component):
    def main(self):
        count = 0
        while 1:
            yield 1
            count += 1 # This is to show our data is changing :-)
            if self.dataReady("inbox"):
                data = self.recv("inbox")
                print data, count

p = Producer("Hello World")
c = Consumer()
postie = postman(p, "outbox", c, "inbox")

myscheduler = scheduler()
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(p)
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(c)
myscheduler.activateMicroprocess(postie)

for _ in myscheduler.main():
    pass

The code for this miniaxon is here in subversion:

• http://kamaelia.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/kamaelia/trunk/Code/Ruby/

The first class in that file (Coroutine) and first utility function there come from this entry:

• http://mono.kmc.gr.jp/~oxy/w/hiki.cgi?Coroutine

What's next for this? Don't know really. As a proof of concept, it's interesting - its *as* capable an equivalent python based mini-axon, and could in theory give ruby developers the same boost that we get in python.  I've no intention on doing a massive rewrite of existing python  kamaelia code into Ruby, but it does open up some interesting options.

Language agnosticism is something I've always wanted for Kamaelia and this, along with Michael Barker's  Java based experiments (and the fact that jython can run mini axon too), imply to me that the approach really can be language agnostic as was always intended :-)