The latest version of IronRuby, the now open-source implementation of Ruby on the .NET Dynamic Language Runtime (DLR), now comes with added support for Visual Studio projects.
The IronRuby project has had a tumulus few months. Back in July we wrote about the extremely well received version 1.1 launch, which brought with it a stack of bug fixes and features in addition to LINQ support. In August, Jimmy Schementi – who headed up the DLR, IronRuby and IronPython teams at Microsoft – unexpectedly quit his job and moved across the United States. At the same time, the DLR, IronRuby and IronPython were all open-sourced under the Apache 2 license.
Following that period of doubt over their persisted existence, it seems that all is well for the family of languages. While the release of version 1.1.1 will be the last that Microsoft does before handing it over to community developers, there are some great features included. Ruby 1.9.2 is now the supported target, and features from older iterations have been dropped (however, the 1.9.2 support is only parser-deep – some of the backend has yet to be implemented to support the commands). Most simple Ruby on Rails projects will work with version 1.1.1, and it passes most of the tests in the Rails project.
Also included in the latest version is the integration with Visual Studio. On all non-Expression editions of Visual Studio, you can have Ruby syntax highlighting and checking, as well as templates for common Ruby projects (Rails 3, Sinatra, Gems and others).
More on IronRuby 1.1.1 as well as downloads for the Visual Studio installers on the ]IronRuby Codeplex page](http://ironruby.codeplex.com/releases/view/49097#ReleaseNotes).
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