After thinking about this for more than 1 second I guess a large portion of RVM that works after you have Ruby installed, such as rvmsudo, could be based on Ruby. Leaving the setup code written in Bash.
> Bootstrapping
> Using ruby should be possible thanks to binary rubies, in worst case we can fallback to static build or use JRuby. The binary Ruby (or static or JRuby) will be installed along with RVM 2 using very simple bootstrapping script written in shell most likely pure SH to provide compatibility with as much systems as possible
I had similar thoughts. The fact that RVM is implemented (currently) in shell means you don't need Ruby installed. It does, however, expose your tool to all the idiosyncrasies of someone else's shell environment.
I sit in #rvm on Freenode from time to time and the vast majority of trouble pings are related to differences in environment. That is to say, if you run a standard (as in, not heavily customized) environment, you won't have much trouble. There are a large number of users who really like to tweak their shell though, so RVM has to face the issue head on.
I think this is what has lead the team to the "bundled" approach. It sounds like RVM 2.0 will be a full-blown application, rather than a collection of scripts. The choice to build the application in Ruby, as opposed to something like C, seems obvious when you consider what it is. Ruby folks want to write Ruby.
Thanks for the link. That definitely makes sense. They'll get a lot more involvement from Ruby developers when they wouldn't have to write it in Bash, that's for sure.
