From: Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs@...>
Date: 2006-07-20T13:37:38+09:00
Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005?

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On 7/19/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> Curt Hibbs wrote:
> > The MinGW environment could be distributed with the One-Click Ruby
> > Installer
> > (which is a plus), but I believe the MS compiler would need to be
> > separately
> > downloaded and installed by the end user.
> >
> > Curt
> >
> Ah, but if the "environment" is really 77 MB, that would hurt ... a lot
> ...
>
> I've been thinking about the way R does it. Briefly, their main
> development platform is Linux, and their main method of package
> distribution is source. On Linux, a package with just R source is simply
> downloaded from a repository, unpacked, checked, and then is executable.
> Packages containing C, C++ or Fortran source are compiled at install
> time. R itself is often built from source, although the common binary
> formats (RPM, Debian, MacOS X) are supported. Building R from source on
> a Linux system requires C/C++, Fortran, etc. It's a straightforward
> "configure; make; make check; make install" sequence.
>
> On Windows, however, R is distributed as a one-click installer. And
> packages are usually pre-compiled and installed from ZIP archives
> downloaded from the repository. If you want to build packages from
> source, you have to install an exact set of tools and follow an exact
> procedure. Someone on the R project team does this for most of the
> packages! And if you want to build R itself, you have to install even
> more tools and follow even more exact procedures. Again, someone on the
> R project team does this every time there's a release, and in addition
> *daily* for patched and development releases!!
>
> Incidentally, like R and most of the library packages, the tools to
> build R and the packages on Windows are all open source or at least
> freely downloadable. I believe the only Microsoft dependency is to
> compile help files, though I could be wrong about that.
>
> My question is, "Would such a model (mostly open source, but everything
> precompiled by someone for Windows,)" work for Ruby, Ruby's gems and
> other packages, and Ruby's Windows users? I've lived with it for years
> in the R world. It's not my preferred _modus operandi_ but it was tough
> enough to get an open source tool like R "approved" in a corporate
> Windows IT shop. The fact that R is a far better piece of software than
> commercial packages with licenses costing multiple thousands of US
> dollars didn't matter. These people only see the risks.


That's pretty much how it works today.

So ... is someone going to step up to the plate and pre-compile gems
> that require C or some other language? This model seems to work for R;
> would it work for Ruby? Rails?


Binary, platform-specific RubyGems are already possible. FXRuby, for
example, is distributed this way.

Curt

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