From: "Jan Krüger" <jk@...>
Date: 2004-10-28T00:39:41+09:00
Subject: Re: The real Ruby vs. Python.

trans. (T. Onoma) wrote:
> On Wednesday 27 October 2004 10:48 am, Howard Lewis Ship wrote:
> | I tried using the basic Ruby for windows package and got a few
> | mysterious errors ("readline.dll not found" when running  irb).
> |
> | I backed that out and used Cygwin to install ruby.  Now it runs perfectly.
> |
> | I was able to install RubyGems and start exploring that as well.  It
> | didn't work with the "native" Ruby, but is completely seamless (to my
> | cursory examination) when using Ruby under Cygwin.
> |
> | Cygwin, by explantion, is a POSIX layer on top of Windows.  It adds
> | aptget/rpm type functionality ... you download a small installer and
> | it downloads package descriptions for all the (Li|U)nixy stuff.  It
> | handles downloading, installing, versioning, dependencies.
> |
> | http://www.cygwin.com/
> 
> 
> Are there downsides to this approach for Windows users?

Cygwin adds a something like a gnu/linux/posix layer between the 
application and Windows, therefore not all "features" of Windows are 
easily accessible and sometimes performance suffers. From a 
Windows-user point of view sometimes unexpected effects may happen 
because of the different semantics of the 2 worlds, eg: file system 
permissions (Windows ACL's vs. POSIX bits within cygwin and the 
translation between them).

cygwin itself is convinient to install and maintain.

Gruß
Jan