From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-09-07T06:18:26+09:00
Subject: Re: Newbie Mixed Bag

On 9/6/05, mathew <meta@pobox.com> wrote:
> Austin Ziegler wrote:
> > There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
> > of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
> > the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
> > things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
> > in any case.
> ....though they might if you run Cygwin and do your Ruby development in
> Cygwin. With Cygwin you can get all the usual Linux GNU tools on your
> Windows box, including GCC, GNU Make, SQLite and so on, as well as the
> Cygwin version of Ruby.
> 
> (Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to
> mention that.)
> 
> Of course, developing under Cygwin isn't a good solution if you
> ultimately want your program to be a native Windows application; but if
> you just want to learn or want a Unix-like environment on your Windows
> machine, it's perfectly adequate.

As long as you don't mind foregoing nice things like Win32OLE, the
Cygwin version of Ruby is acceptable. I personally find that
inadequate. Cygwin is, as always, a poor mesh with Windows.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca