Getting Started with JRuby and Java 7

The important bit is that “u2” appear somewhere in that line. ## Getting JRuby Of course getting JRuby is always pretty easy. ### JRuby 1.6.x (current release) The current release of JRuby is always available on the [JRuby homepage](http://jruby.org/). Here, you'll find tarballs, zipfiles, Windows installers, and JRuby in other forms. Download, unpack, add bin/ to PATH, and you're ready. If you want to get the leading edge of the JRuby 1.6 line, including fixes that have not yet been released, you can download a nightly snapshot from JRuby's [release snapshots page](http://ci.jruby.org/snapshots/release). You can also install JRuby through RVM or rbenv, using `rvm install jruby` or `rbenv install jruby-1.6.5`, respectively. This is our recommended procedure for folks already using RVM or rbenv. It's also possible to build/install JRuby 1.6.x snapshots using `rvm install --branch jruby-1\_6 jruby-head`. Windows users may be interested in [pik](https://github.com/vertiginous/pik), an RVM-like tool for managing Ruby installations. It supports JRuby, naturally. There are also JRuby packages for most major Linux and BSD variants. They're not always up-to-date, however. Finally, you can clone JRuby from the [JRuby github repository](http://github.com/jruby/jruby) and build the jruby-1_6 branch. ### JRuby 1.7.x (in development) JRuby 1.7 is not out yet…we had been waiting for OpenJDK 7u2 to drop before starting our finalization process. But we're looking for folks to start playing with it now. Until we release JRuby 1.7, you can get it a few different ways. Simplest is probably to grab a snapshot from the JRuby's [master snapshots page](http://ci.jruby.org/snapshots/master). You'll find the usual complement of packages and installers there. RVM can install JRuby master using `rvm install jruby-head`. And of course, you can clone from [Github](http://github.com/jruby/jruby) and build the master branch yourself, by running `ant`. JRuby runs fine from the working copy. ## Use the Right Java Version Ironically, the most complicated part of this process is making sure your system is set up correctly to use Java 7 instead of some other version. The simple answer is to hardcode the Java 7 bin/ dir in your shell's PATH, but that's both inelegant and incompatible with some systems' preferred mechanisms. Here's a short survey of more elegant ways to easily swap Java versions. ### Linux As with most things, Linux variants don't agree on how to manage multiple alternative versions of a given package. Below I summarize the “blessed” way to do it on various Linux flavors. Alternatively, you can rig up a trivial shell function or script that, when run, rewrites your environment to point at the target Java installation. See the “pickjdk” script for OS X below.

Debian variants (Debian, Ubuntu, etc) On Debian, your command of choice will be update-java-alternatives. This resets a set of global symlinks to point at the Java installation you prefer. It's not the most elegant way, since the change is made globally, but it is the blessed way.

RedHat variants RedHat has a similar command called “alternatives”, under which there's a “java” namespace. the JBoss 5 docs have a nice page on [setting the default JDK on RHEL](http://docs.redhat.com/docs/en-US/JBoss_Enterprise_Web_Platform/5/html/Installation_Guide/sect-use_alternatives_to_set_default_JDK.html).

Gentoo and other Linux variants I have so far been unable to find a way to easily manage multiple installed Java versions on Gentoo. Feel free to submit suggestions in the comments. _Update_: Gentoo's mechanism is the `java-config` command. `java-config -L` lists all installed runtimes, and `java-config -set X` sets the default to runtime X. ### Windows On Windows, your best best is generally to put the preferred Java version's bin/ dir in PATH. If you have other suggestions, feel free to comment. ### OS X On OS X, you have a few options. Your best option will be to use the oft-tweaked “pickjdk” script, which scans installed JDK versions and presents a menu. Selecting a version rewrites your environment to point at that version. I prefer [my pickjdk variant](https://gist.github.com/1234935), since it allows specifying an install number directly without going through the menu. An alternative is to configure your environment manually. Java installations are located under`/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines`; set JAVA_HOME to`/Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/1.7.0u.jdk/Contents/Home`and prepend $JAVA_HOME/bin to your PATH. You're ready to go. _Update_: There's an easy way to find available JAVA_HOMEs: the `java_home` command.`/usr/libexec/java_home` will return the path to the default JVM (from Java Preferences). You can also specify `-v 1.7` for the first Java 7 (1.7) install, or pass `-V` to list all available JVMs. You can also open up the Java Preferences utility (located in /Applications/Utilities) and drag your preferred Java version to the top. This is a _global_ change, and will affect any programs that use the default Java version. Because the GUI parts of the OS X Java 7 preview are still in development, THIS IS NOT RECOMMENDED. ### Other OSes I don't know the proper mechanism for managing Java installations on the other BSDs or on Solaris. Feel free to comment. ## Try It Out! Once you've got JRuby installed and in PATH (via whatever mechanism) and Java 7 installed and in PATH (via whatever mechanism), you're ready to test it out! Start up `jirb`, launch your favorite JRuby-based app, or just run some benchmarks. If you're especially interested in performance, try out `bench/bench_red_black.rb` from JRuby's benchmark suite. It's a pure-Ruby implementation and benchmark of a red/black tree, and a good representation of the kind of performance improvements you should see from JRuby on Java 7. There's plenty of other benchmarks in our suite and in the wild… play around and let us know how it goes. ## What to Expect Java 7 brings a lot of performance updates, even without invokedynamic. If you're using JRuby 1.6.x, you should see an immediate performance improvement moving from Java 6 to Java 7. I have heard reports of anywhere from 10-30% faster applications. If you're trying out JRuby master (1.7), you should see even more significant improvements. JRuby 1.7's use of invokedynamic means that Ruby code runs faster, optimizes better, and uses fewer resources. In fact, if you _don't_ see better performance with JRuby 1.7 versus JRuby 1.6 on Java 7, please report an issue at [JRuby's bug tracker](http://bugs.jruby.org/). You've probably found a flaw in our compiler…a flaw we'll want to fix before release. As a bit of a teaser, here's [my numbers running the red/black tree benchmark](https://gist.github.com/1493911) from above (the numbers are time in seconds). Compared to JRuby on Java 6, JRuby on Java 7 _without_invokedynamic is around 25% faster, and JRuby with invokedynamic is nearly _3 times_ faster. It's also worth mentioning that invokedynamic isn't “done”. There's a new optimizer planned for Java 7u4 and my OpenJDK friends tell me there are many opportunities to increase performance. JRuby on Java 7 will just keep getting faster. JRuby has room to grow as well. We're using invokedynamic heavily for the upcoming 1.7 release, but there's many places yet to be adapted. The performance you see today is not the end of the story…there's a lot more we can do. ## Your Turn That's about it for this tutorial. Hopefully you'll be up and running on JRuby with Java 7 very quickly. If you have any trouble, please comment…we'll try update this article with fixes and suggestions. And I repeat my call for feedback on JRuby master + Java 7…this is the future of JRuby, and it could be the future of high-performance Ruby. Let's work together to make it awesome!