Ruby.NET and REXML: Not Yet

I finally had a chance to play around with the latest download of the Gardens Point Ruby.NET compiler. At first, I was excited, as my little DSL test application was able to run perfectly. Blocks, instance_eval, singleton classes all worked fine for me. Very cool!

Then I decided to experiment with the REXML ruby parser. I did so despite the fact that the compiler authors have stated in their project goals that "We do not however plan to implement the other Ruby libraries that commonly ship with the Ruby distribution, such as CGI and DBM (except for those implemented 100% in Ruby)". Since REXML is however completely implemented in Ruby, I thought I would give it a try. Unfortunately, I discovered that the Ruby.NET authors did not lie when they said that "Implementation is not yet complete but we have now implemented the vast majority of Ruby's builtin classes and modules. We have fixed large numbers of existing bugs, but many still remain."

I tried to run the simplest possible REXML sample:

require "rexml/document"
doc = REXML::Document.new File.new("mydoc.xml")

But here was my result:

loading rexml/document
  loading rexml/element
    loading rexml/parent
      loading rexml/child
        loading rexml/node
          loading rexml/parseexception
          finished loading rexml/parseexception
        finished loading rexml/node
      finished loading rexml/child
    finished loading rexml/parent
    loading rexml/namespace
      loading rexml/xmltokens
      finished loading rexml/xmltokens
    finished loading rexml/namespace
    loading rexml/attribute
      loading rexml/text
        loading rexml/entity
          loading rexml/source
            loading rexml/encoding
            finished loading rexml/encoding
          finished loading rexml/source
        finished loading rexml/entity
        loading rexml/doctype
          loading rexml/attlistdecl
          finished loading rexml/attlistdecl
        finished loading rexml/doctype
      finished loading rexml/text
    finished loading rexml/attribute
    loading rexml/cdata
    finished loading rexml/cdata
    loading rexml/xpath
      loading rexml/functions
      finished loading rexml/functions
      loading rexml/xpath_parser
        loading rexml/syncenumerator
        finished loading rexml/syncenumerator
        loading rexml/parsers/xpathparser
        finished loading rexml/parsers/xpathparser
      finished loading rexml/xpath_parser
    finished loading rexml/xpath
  finished loading rexml/element
  loading rexml/xmldecl
  finished loading rexml/xmldecl
  loading rexml/comment
  finished loading rexml/comment
  loading rexml/instruction
  finished loading rexml/instruction
  loading rexml/rexml
  finished loading rexml/rexml
  loading rexml/output
  finished loading rexml/output
  loading rexml/parsers/baseparser
  finished loading rexml/parsers/baseparser
  loading rexml/parsers/streamparser
  finished loading rexml/parsers/streamparser
  loading rexml/parsers/treeparser
    loading rexml/validation/validationexception
    finished loading rexml/validation/validationexception
  finished loading rexml/parsers/treeparser

Unhandled Exception: System.MissingMethodException: Method not found: 'System.Ob
ject Ruby.Eval.ivar_defined(System.String)'.
   at Ruby.Compiler.AST.PROGRAM.ExecuteMain(PEFile Assembly, String[] args)
   at Ruby.Compiler.RubyMain.Main(String[] args)

Oh well! Maybe next month's release will be ready for REXML...