<p>I am developing an application in using Ruby on Rails, mostly as an excuse to learn the language.</p>

<p>This is not intended to be a web-based application - and perhaps I have chosen the wrong language, but...</p>

<p>My understanding is, that in order to run an instance of this application on somebody else's computer, they would need to install ruby on rails, and a webserver (or webrick, perhaps), as well as my application code.</p>

<p>I am just curious if there are any other options for distributing my application as a standalone app, or perhaps just a simple way to package up a web browser and ROR together with my app for a simple, one-step install?</p>

[{'answer_id': 55714, 'author': 'Chris Upchurch', 'author_id': 2600, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/2600', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/gearsonrails/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Gears on Rails</a> maybe?</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 55718, 'author': 'Josh Moore', 'author_id': 5004, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/5004', 'pm_score': 3, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>I have personally never needed to do this.  But, I have ran across this tutorial <a href="http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html" rel="noreferrer">http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html</a> that I think will be helpful.  The tutorial covers how to actually convert a rails app into a standalone exe file.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 55733, 'author': 'Dale Ragan', 'author_id': 1117, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1117', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You can include Ruby on Rails by freezing it to the version of Rails you want to use in your project.  They call this Freezing.  The user will not have to install Rails to use your application.  You can do this with any library you use in your project.  If the project uses a library, just place it under the Vendor folder in your project.  Then use a tool similar to what <a href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/55711/options-for-distribution-of-an-offline-ruby-on-rails-application#55718">@Josh</a> answered with to package it.</p>\n\n<p>You will need a web server to run the project though.  There is no way around this.  Ruby on Rails is just like ASP.NET in this regard, in that it is a server side framework.  The server runs the code and outputs the HTML to the browser by using the Rails framework.</p>\n\n<p>Unfortunately, you may have picked the wrong framework to do what you want.  Instead of Ruby on Rails, you may want to check out <a href="http://shoesrb.com/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Shoes</a>, which is a framework for developing GUI applications using Ruby.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 56333, 'author': 'Charles Roper', 'author_id': 1944, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1944', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p><strong>Note, Slingshot appears to be a dead project (see comments). I\'ll leave this answer here for historical purposes and the off-chance that it comes back</strong></p>\n\n<p>Joyent\'s <a href="http://joyent.com/developers/slingshot/" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><strong>Slingshot</strong></a> might be a good bet.</p>\n\n<blockquote>\n  <p>Joyent Slingshot allows developers to deploy Rails applications like a standard desktop application, which work online and offline (with synchronization), have drag and drop, and interact with all the other desktop applications.</p>\n  \n  <p>With Joyent Slingshot:</p>\n  \n  <ul>\n  <li>Create a hybrid Web/desktop application</li>\n  <li>Synchronize online and offline data</li>\n  <li>Use the same code for online and offline application(s)</li>\n  <li>Deploy and update your application easily</li>\n  <li>Drag into and out of application</li>\n  </ul>\n</blockquote>\n\n<p><strong>Here are some further links to help with your evaluation and/or to help you get started:</strong></p>\n\n<ul>\n<li><a href="http://joyeur.com/2007/03/22/joyent-slingshot" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Introducing Joyent Slingshot</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://dev.joyent.com/projects/slingshot/wiki/BasicApp" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Basic application walkthrough</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://dev.joyent.com/projects/slingshot/wiki/Slingshot" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Slingshot wiki</a></li>\n</ul>\n'}, {'answer_id': 56516, 'author': 'James A. Rosen', 'author_id': 1190, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/1190', 'pm_score': 1, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>You could always consider compiling your Ruby to JVM byte-code (via <a href="http://jruby.codehaus.org/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">JRuby</a>) or .NET byte-code (via <a href="http://www.ironruby.net/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">IronRuby</a>) to distribute to people who have those virtual machines and don\'t want to install a Ruby runtime.</p>\n\n<p>You might want to check out <a href="http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/shoes/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Shoes</a> for building desktop applications in Ruby.  Rails really is tuned for building websites.</p>\n'}, {'answer_id': 56562, 'author': 'ottobar', 'author_id': 5830, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/5830', 'pm_score': 0, 'selected': False, 'text': "<p>You do not specifically say whether it is supposed to be a GUI application or not. From the other answers, I would guess so. </p>\n\n<p>Therefore, you need to clarify what your goals are.  RoR is a specialized framework for web applications. If your goal is to learn RoR, I'd say to get yourself some inexpensive web hosting and make yourself an app. If your goal is to learn Ruby, not necessarily Rails, then Shoes, IronRuby, JRuby, MacRuby and others may be good options to look at. </p>\n"}, {'answer_id': 57757, 'author': 'cpm', 'author_id': 3674, 'author_profile': 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3674', 'pm_score': 2, 'selected': False, 'text': '<p>The way most people ship ruby programs, including Rails webapps, as a standalone exe is via rubyscript2exe. They describe how to package a Rails application at <a href="http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/distributingrubyapplications/rails.html</a>. Ruby, Rails, and all the associated libraries will be included in the EXE file.</p>\n\n<p>As others mentioned, Ruby is not necessarily Rails and if you really want an easy way to write a distributable GUI application in Ruby, <a href="http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/shoes/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Shoes</a> is an excellent place to start looking.</p>\n'}]
['https://Stackoverflow.com/questions/55711', 'https://Stackoverflow.com', 'https://Stackoverflow.com/users/3764/']