From: Charlie Savage <cfis@...>
Date: 2006-06-29T09:29:33+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] mkrf 0.1.0 released

Kevin,

This looks like it will be really useful.

One place where the mkmf does not work is trying to build extensions 
with MingW on Windows with a Ruby version compiled by VC++.  The problem 
is that mkmf assumes you are using VC++ to build your extensions 
(because it grabs the library info from rbconfig), but aren't.

Note that using MingW to build extensions works fine if you're willing 
to create your own makefiles  - which is what I've done for the Ruby 
GDAL bindings, Ruby GEOS bindings and for ruby-prof for Windows.  What 
would be a lot better is if I could put together a mkrf rake script, 
integrated with Ruby Gems, that was smart enough to:

* Build on Linux
* Build on Windows with VC++
* Build on Windows with MingW (you might also need msys).

I assume you've looked at Python's distutils?  If not, take a look.  It 
has knowledge built into it about MingW on Windows well as VC++.  It 
would be good to end up with something like it.

Thanks,

Charlie


Kevin Clark wrote:
> I'm pleased to announce that tonight marks the first release of mkrf,
> a library which generates Rakefiles to build C extensions to Ruby and
> is aimed at a replacement for mkmf. This is a Ruby Summer of Code
> project (http://code.google.com/soc/ruby/about.html).
> 
> Though the gem doesn't seem to have propogated yet, it should be
> availble through rubygems, and until then you can download the gem
> directly at http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/11283/mkrf-0.1.0.gem
> 
> The code does have RDoc included which I hope explains things well
> enough. Please do send questions and bug reports my way. I'll have a
> project setup at advisr.org where you can submit bug reports as soon
> as I tweak its source to properly scope accounts, but until then email
> is fine.
> 
> **Please do try mkrf with your extensions. Please do send feedback.**
> 
> As for syntax, it can be as simple as:
> 
>  Mkrf::Generator.new('libtrivial_so.bundle')
> 
> or more complex:
> 
>  Mkrf::Generator.new('libxml_so.bundle', '*.c') do |g|
>    g.include_library('socket','socket')
>    g.include_header('libxml/xmlversion.h',
>                     '/opt/include/libxml2',
>                     '/usr/local/include/libxml2',
>                     '/usr/include/libxml2')
>  end
> 
>