opal/opal

Health v2 · maintenance only

Adoption not part of the score

4926 stars · 336 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Opal is a Ruby to JavaScript source-to-source compiler that ships with its own implementation of the Ruby corelib and stdlib. It lets developers write Ruby code and run it anywhere JavaScript runs — the browser, Node.js, Deno, Bun, or QuickJS — with two-way JavaScript interop and no runtime interpreter.

Use cases

• compile ruby code to javascript
• write frontend code in ruby
• share ruby code between server and browser
• run ruby scripts on nodejs
• use ruby in a rails app for client-side logic
• call javascript libraries from ruby
• build browser apps without writing javascript

When to choose

• you want to write browser or Node.js code in Ruby instead of JavaScript
• you need to share models, objects, or specs between a Ruby backend and a JS-running client
• you want ahead-of-time compilation to plain JavaScript with no runtime VM
• you use frameworks like Rails, Rack, Hyperstack, or Isomorfeus and want Ruby end-to-end

When to avoid

• you need full CRuby compatibility — some Ruby features are unsupported on a JavaScript host
• your project is pure backend Ruby with no JavaScript target
• you need native performance or low-level control that transpiled Ruby cannot provide
• you depend on C-extension gems that cannot run in the browser

Facets

library · maturity stable

compiler programming-language interpreter cli developer-tools programming-languages compilers web-development frontend developer-tools cross-platform browser bun cli cross-platform ruby-to-javascript transpiler source-to-source-compiler corelib stdlib ruby-implementation js-interop isomorphic-code nodejs deno web-server

Member repositories

For agents

markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="opal/opal")