From: ara.t.howard@...
Date: 2006-07-22T00:52:51+09:00
Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005?

On Sat, 22 Jul 2006, Austin Ziegler wrote:

> The better question is not "easier"; the better question is "which
> will give me *better*" binary results? The answer to that nearly every
> time will be the Microsoft toolchain.

here's a challenge:

setup a binary gsl build we can download and test using ms toolchain only - no
msys or cygwin allowed.  i maintain you, or the ms developers, will not be
able to provide __any__ binary results let alone __better__ ones.  keep in
mind that the gsl is nothing but pure ansi c code - it should be a trivial
task to get it working under windows.  i think this would be a great litmus
test since gsl is a top download on rubyforge, a significant peice of ansi
compliant c code with no platform depedancies, and extremely useful to the
ruby community.  which begs the question: why do people charge 400$ to compile
using ms toolchain?  why did i get paid to compile for windows using msys
toolchain?  why did it take me about 10 minutes to do so?

i'll be happy to have it shown that i'm an idiot (not the first time) and that
it's trivial to get the gsl running using the one-click and ms toolchain but
until then i'll maintain that an ms based ruby is broken and continute to do
so until people show some actual code being compiled, run, and profiled vs all
the talk.

gauntlet thrown!

kind regards.

btw.  my msys derived version is here

   http://codeforpeople.com/lib/ruby/rb-gsl-win/

-a
-- 
suffering increases your inner strength.  also, the wishing for suffering
makes the suffering disappear.
- h.h. the 14th dali lama