From: Luis Lavena <luislavena@...>
Date: 2009-07-27T16:32:19+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:24571] Request: add better information to website download page.

Hello,

I would like to request addition of better text that clearly state the
requirements for advertised Ruby binaries (at this time 1.8.7-p72 and
1.9.1-p0).

Reasoning behind this request:

Over the past months, several Windows users wanted to try 1.9.1
version of Ruby. Contrary to their counterparts on platforms like
Linux or OSX, they suffered a high level of frustration using the
links in the download page:

http://www.ruby-lang.org/en/downloads/

These links for the above mentioned versions points to packages that
lacks several libraries needed to correctly work. This means these
suggested binaries offer a borked/broken experience to these users.

These binaries lack minimal and indispensable libraries like OpenSSL,
ZLib and Readline, not to mention other extensions built but missing
bindings like Tk and gdbm.

The download page points directly to the Zipped packages, not
mentioning or referencing the need of additional steps to complete and
enjoy Ruby on Windows platform.

The lack of these crucial information highly affect Ruby image,
support of the platform and put a negative image to it form step 1.

From my understanding and experience, those packages are a copy of the
ones listed and offered here:

http://www.garbagecollect.jp/ruby/mswin32/en/

Over this site, there a page that barely mentions these requirements
without direct "copy and paste" instructions on how to solve them:

http://www.garbagecollect.jp/ruby/mswin32/en/documents/install.html

To give a better example, it mentions Zlib as dependency, while not
clearly stating that it depends on a 1.1.x version of it instead of
latest 1.2.3 one.

Similar issues happens with OpenSSL which generates "Undefined
ordinal" errors when newer OpenSSL binaries are used with bundled
binary extension.

As maintainer and part of RubyInstaller Team (known as One-Click Ruby
Installer), we work hard to improve Ruby "image" and first time users
experience.

A simple google search points to the first mentioned page, and thus,
rendering all our effort to improve this situation pointless.

While we work on a series of new installers, we would like to request
a better documentation or at least point to the proper resources for
"Ruby for Windows" section of Downloads page.

Since I'm unaware of the website maintainer and protocol in relation
to the website content, please respond to this message with
instructions to follow to correct the above mentioned issue.

Thank you in advance for your time and looking forward hear back from
the community.
-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup�ry