Re: Will 1.8.6 remain compiled with VC6?

On 9/30/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Yes, let's take this to Ruby-Talk so we can all participate. Most of the
> open source projects I deal with on Windows have gone to || stayed with
> MinGW/MSYS and its friends. Ruby seems to be the exception. I remember
> the past discussions and my own point of view was that it didn't really
> matter to me as long as the gems && other C/C++ libraries were available
> in binary form and in source form if their licenses required it. I don't
> *need* to build from source on Windows, although I wouldn't refuse the
> opportunity to do so.
>

Maybe you're right, cross-posting this could get more answers from
actual ruby-mswin32 users.

The concern about gems and other C/C++ libraries in "binary form" is
why I started this.

Trying to get VC8 to compile extensions that where only available to
*nix platforms (Take for example Mongrel).

Ruby-VC6 make this a nightmare. Even VC71.

Lucky me I recovered a lost Visual Studio 97 we had on office and
installed VC6. Now mswin32 users of Mongrel have a binary gem to use
and enjoy.

> So while I know that VC8 is a "better" compiler than MinGW/MSYS, what
> other open source projects, if any, use VC8? How many others use VC6?

I wonder why you quoted 'better' when talking about VC8 :-)

MinGW/MSYS reduces the overwork getting something build/updated on
Windows, take as example Ruby.

I worked almost 3 days in a row to get all the Ruby dependencies (as I
listed that before) compile and properly run with VC8.

That was a huge amount of time "invested" in. On the other side, get
almost every extension bundled with ruby build under MinGW took me
less than a day (Using MinGWports and GnuWin32 source packages).

VC6 is no longer in use for Python or Subversion, both of the bigger
OSS I have seen.

Sometimes a lot of projects (like wxWindows) compiles better with
MinGW, since there is no maintainer for the nmake-compatible makefiles
or the msbuild solution files.

> What are the licensing gotchas on the Intel compiler? In general, are
> open source projects on Windows doomed to be second-class citizens? :(

ICC requires us having a Intel license, from compiling Ruby to
creating extensions.

As I said before, the thing about VC6/VC8 is not about is the right
compiler or faster compiler, but I was considering the problems most
developers face when creating/maintaining extensions for Ruby.

-- 
Luis Lavena
Multimedia systems
-
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort,
which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that
is worthwhile.
Vince Lombardi