Anyolite

Anyolite is a Crystal shard which adds a fully functional mruby interpreter to Crystal.

Description

Anyolite allows for wrapping Crystal classes and functions into mruby with little effort. This way, mruby can be used as a scripting language to Crystal projects, with the major advantage of a similar syntax.

This project is currently in the early development phase, so please report any bugs or missing relevant features.

Features

• Bindings to an mruby interpreter
• Wrapping of nearly arbitrary Crystal classes and methods to mruby
• Easy syntax without unnecessary bolderplate code
• Support for keyword arguments and default values
• Simple system to prevent garbage collector conflicts

Prerequisites

You need to have the following programs installed (and in your PATH variable, if you are on Windows):

• Ruby (for building mruby)
• Rake (for building the whole project)
• Bison (for building mruby)
• Git (for downloading mruby)
• GCC or Microsoft Visual Studio 19 (for building the object files required for Anyolite, depending on your OS)

Installing

Put this shard as a requirement into your shard.yml project file and then call

shards install

from a terminal or the MSVC Developer Console (on Windows).

Alternatively, you can clone this repository into the lib folder of your project and run

rake build_shard

manually to install the shard without using the crystal shards program.

If you want to use other options for Anyolite, you can set ANYOLITE_CONFIG_PATH to the filename of a JSON config file, which allows for changing multiple options when installing the shard. Possible options are:

• ANYOLITE_BUILDPATH - The relative directory in which Anyolite will be built
• ANYOLITE_MRUBY_FORK - The web address of the mruby repository
• ANYOLITE_MRUBY_DIR - The relative directory mruby will be installed in
• ANYOLITE_MRUBY_CONFIG_PATH - The config file which is used for building mruby
• ANYOLITE_COMPILER - The C compiler used for building Anyolite

How to use

Imagine a Crystal class for a really bad RPG:

module TestModule
  class Entity
    property hp : Int32 = 0

    def initialize(@hp)
    end

    def damage(diff : Int32)
      @hp -= diff
    end

    def yell(sound : String, loud : Bool = false)
      if loud
        puts "Entity yelled: #{sound.upcase}"
      else
        puts "Entity yelled: #{sound}"
      end
    end

    def absorb_hp_from(other : Entity)
      @hp += other.hp
      other.hp = 0
    end
  end
end

Now, you want to wrap this class in Ruby. All you need to do is to execute the following code in Crystal (current commit; see documentation page for the version of the latest release):

require "anyolite"

MrbState.create do |mrb|
  MrbWrap.wrap(mrb, TestModule)

  mrb.load_script_from_file("examples/hp_example.rb")
end

Well, that's it already. The last line in the block calls the following example script:

a = TestModule::Entity.new(hp: 20)
a.damage(diff: 13)
puts a.hp

b = TestModule::Entity.new(hp: 10)
a.absorb_hp_from(other: b)
puts a.hp
puts b.hp
b.yell(sound: 'Ouch, you stole my HP!', loud: true)
a.yell(sound: 'Well, take better care of your public attributes!')

The example above gives a good overview over the things you can already do with Anyolite. More features will be added in the future.

Limitations

• Currently, Anyolite does not work on Windows due to Crystal compiler bugs
• Arrays, hashes and other complex mruby objects are not directly supported
• Configuration options for mruby are relatively limited (yet)
• Default values for unnamed function arguments are limited to integers and floats
• Optional keyword arguments need a default value (can be a different one than the Crystal value, though)
• Keywords will always be given to functions, even if optional (then with default values)
• Splat arguments and arbitrary keywords are not possible due to compiletime symbols in Crystal
• Only one type per argument is allowed

Why this name?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anyolite

In short, it is a rare variant of the crystalline mineral called zoisite, with a ruby and crystal shards (of pargasite) embedded.

The term 'anyoli' means 'green' in the Maasai language, thus naming 'anyolite'.

Roadmap

Releases

Version 0.4.0

Major features

• Easier wrapping of classes and all of their methods and constants
• Annotation to exclude functions from wrapping
• Annotation to specialize functions for wrapping
• Annotation to rename wrapped functions
• Full wrapping of module and class hierarchies

Breaking changes

• Function names with operators do not include the operator into the ruby name anymore
• Unified module and class cache

Usability

• Documentation updates for the new wrapping routines
• Functions with only an operator in their name can now be wrapped using MrbWrap::Empty

Bugfixes

• Nested classes and modules can now be wrapped reliably

Version 0.3.0

Features

• Crystal structs are wrapped using wrapper objects

Breaking changes

• Struct hash values as object ID replacements are obsolete
• Option hash for reference table instead of flags
• Consistent naming for mruby hooks

Safety

• Structs with equal hash values do not interfere anymore

Usability

• MrbModule instances and Crystal modules can both be used in wrapper methods

Version 0.2.3

Usability

• More options for adjusting reference table

Bugfixes

• Fixed reference counter not increasing

Version 0.2.2

Usability

• Added more debugging methods
• Allowed for custom object IDs by defining mruby_object_id for a class

Bugfixes

• Fixed problems with struct wrapping

Version 0.2.1

Usability

• Operator suffixes as general optional argument for MrbWrap functions
• Option to inspect reference table
• Reference counting in reference table
• Reference table can be cleared

Bugfixes

• Fixed structs not being able to be wrapped
• Fixed example in documentation
• Fixed memory leak when returning nontrivial objects in mruby
• Removed constructor limitations for types being able to be used as return values

Version 0.2.0

Major features

• Keyword argument support
• Support for optional keywords

Minor features

• Casting from MrbValue objects to closest Crystal values
• Option to use a JSON config file

Breaking changes

• Optional arguments are passed using tuples instead of MrbWrap::Opt

Safety

• Class checks for arguments
• Checks for correct keyword classes
• Module cache analogous to the class cache

Usability

• Simplified some macro functions considerably
• Arguments can be specified consistently as arrays or standalone
• Documentation builds only for releases
• Uniform system for passing optional arguments
• Updated examples and documentation for keyword support

Bugfixes

• Fixed erros when naming MrbState instances anything other than 'mrb'

Version 0.1.1

Safety

• Added safeguards for reference table access

Bugfixes

• Fixed mruby function return values not being cached
• Fixed minor documentation errors

Version 0.1.0

Major features

• Basic structure
• Ubuntu support
• Wrappers for classes
• Wrappers for modules
• Support for classes in modules
• Wrappers for properties
• Wrappers for instance methods
• Wrappers for module and class methods
• Wrappers for constants
• Optional values for simple argument types
• Crystal GC respects the mruby GC
• Hooks for mruby object creation and deletion
• Simple examples
• Build tests
• Basic documentation

Upcoming releases

Curently none planned

Future updates

• [ ] Windows support (currently not supported due to problems with Crystal)
• [ ] Mac support (might be possible, not tested yet)
• [ ] Compiletime errors for macros
• [ ] Support for more flexible mruby configuration options
• [ ] Arrays as arguments and return values
• [ ] Crystal specs for testing
• [ ] More stable type casting
• [ ] Use Array(TypeDeclaration) instead of Hash for keywords in internal methods
• [ ] Options for inherited and/or inheriting classes

Possible future updates

• [ ] Other types (Hashes, ...) as arguments and return values
• [ ] Option for passing mruby splat arguments as an array
• [ ] Support for arbitrary keyword arguments as hashes
• [ ] More variety for default parameters for unnamed options
• [ ] Method in mruby to determine owner of object (if possible)
• [ ] Include wrapping of nilable classes (if possible)
• [ ] Better context resolution if necessary