I know that cross platform GUIs can be built in Ruby using various tools like shoes and FxRuby, but do these types of tools have platform specific access to the level that I need?
My app is mostly web based, but needs a thin client that is basically just for desktop configuration settings. So I’m only going to have it exist as a menu, and then a few simple tools like folder selection boxes, and when the thin client is launched it will only exist in the tray on windows or in the status item section for a Mac.
Just looking through what is out there, I can’t tell if something like this can be coded in a cross platform way or if it is too platform specific.
Using Swing through JRuby might be your best bet. Whether you’re ok distributing JARs that allow easy access to your source code is another matter. The MonkeyBars gem sought to simplify the use of Swing in JRuby but I don’t think it’s seen much development recently. At any rate it’s fairly trivial to wrap most of the Swing classes without piling syntactic sugar on top.
MacRuby can’t be rivalled for its integration with Cocoa and other OS X frameworks, but you’d then be tied to macs.