From: Ryan Davis <ryand-ruby@...>
Date: 2010-09-10T06:53:20+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:32259] Re: Can we convert the standard library to gems?


On Sep 9, 2010, at 11:25 , Roger Pack wrote:

>>> This also causes odd failures when using 1.9 on windows, because if
>>> you do a "gem install win32api" it ends up installing a gem that has
>>> binaries compiled only compatible with 1.8, so it fails at runtime.
>> 
>> I believe those are separate things, those issues can be solved with
>> fat-binary gems or compiler been available for Windows users.
> 
> To me it feels like more of a work around than a solution.  Plus I'm
> not sure that fat-binary gems would be an ideal way to distribute std
> libs.

I don't know about you, but I certainly don't want to maintain a single C codebase to deal with 2 vastly different Ruby C APIs. The amount of ifdef'ing would be unmaintainable, and in some cases, the designs aren't even compatible. It isn't a workaround, it is a necessity for sanity.