Bowline is a framework for making cross platform desktop applications in Ruby, HTML and JavaScript.

If you’ve ever wished creating a desktop application was as simple as creating a Rails website, Bowline’s for you.

Bowline respects MVC, you can design your views in HTML5/CSS3 – then bind them to your Ruby models. There’s no request/response cycle – any changes in models automatically get reflected in the view.

See : http://bowlineapp.com/

Experiment on this framework:

Requirements:

* Mac OSX >=10.5 or Ubuntu —–> [I am on Ubuntu 9.04]
* Ruby 1.9 —————————–> [I use RVM to switch ruby between different version]
* Bowline gem ———————–> sudo gem install bowline

RVM

* Install RVM to manage Ruby easily, then you decide which version you will use.

OK, Now create an application in an easy way:
>> bowline-gen app helloworld
>> cd helloworld
>> bowline-bundle
>> ./script/run

Unluckily, On Ubuntu 9.0.4, There is an error about a needed lib when I run the application, see
/usr/lib/libstdc++.so.6: version `GLIBCXX_3.4.11′ not found (required by /home/andy/.bowline/bowline-desktop)

I searched around and found it’s something wrong with gcc version, or these is still a webkit lib involved issue under Ubuntu9.0.4, anyway, it’s interesting to me, I am now wondering if we can reference some bowline experience to create iphone/ipad application based on ruby on rails. not sure, I am researching in advance.