From: Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs@...>
Date: 2006-05-25T02:19:08+09:00
Subject: Re: Proposing: A new Ruby Windows installer

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On 5/24/06, Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@acm.org> wrote:
>
>
> If you're right that's pretty bad news :-| I thought MinGW was compatible
> with
> the MSVC6-based ruby-mswin32 builds (I only knew of compatibility problem=
s
> with the runtime used by newer VC compilers). I'm using MinGW to
> cross-compile the extension used by rcov, and was considering offering a
> hand
> to the One Click team...
>
> If they're actually incompatible, this would almost make ruby-mingw32
> preferable as a base to build the One-Click Installer upon, since:
> * mingw is readily available and will not disappear the way MSVC6 did
> * it allows for cross-compilation, meaning one doesn't need a win32 box
> nearby
> to create win32 binaries
>
> Is there anything that would make builds made with the VC-of-the-day
> better an
> option than ruby-mingw32?
>
> I'd guess a possible transition wouldn't be too costly given the new
> One-Click infrastructure. Maybe as little as pointing to
>
> http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/binaries/mingw/1.8/ruby-1.8.4-i386-ming=
w32.tar.gz
> instead of
>
> http://ftp.ruby-lang.org/pub/ruby/binaries/mswin32/ruby-1.8.4-i386-mswin3=
2.zip
> ?


Overall, this is a distressing state of affairs. If anyone here knows a
reason why MinGW would be a bad idea, please speak up. In the long term it
seems like MinGW would be the way to go. But the current 1.8.4 version is
within a week or so of a final release and needs to go out as is.

The reason that I went back to VC++6 was that all of the extensions that I
pick up in binary format are VC++6.

As Ara pointed out, buildng Ruby itself is easy. I've never had problems
building Ruby. Its problems building the extensions that take the most
effort, which is why I went for binaries whenever possible.

But this came from the days when everyone thought that all these compilers
(MinGW, VC++6, VC++7, etc.) were compatible. It really looks like the only
safe approach for the long term is to build everything from source.

I think this is the right thing to do, but I need to find additional, help.
Ryan Leavengood has been tremendously helpful over the last two months. But
knowing my other commitments, we'd need at least one other knowlegable C an=
d
Ruby developer who could be realiably counted on to help.

Curt

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