From: Tanner Burson Date: 2006-07-22T01:19:21+09:00 Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005? ------=_Part_18794_25326155.1153498757031 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Disposition: inline On 7/21/06, Austin Ziegler wrote: > > On 7/18/06, Bill Kelly wrote: > > It's not uncommon, at a minimum, to have to tweak the > > extconf.rb, though. Often an extconf.rb specifies > > gcc-specific compiler flags, or looks for the presence > > of libraries that are named differently, etc. > > Then this is a bug with that extension. Anyone who assumes GCC only on > their extensions is being a platform chauvinist and possibly making > unreasonable assumptions for you. File a bug. > > > I recently compiled the RMagick extension on Windows, > > and it was a complete hack job to get it to compile > > with microsoft's tools. > > > > First of all, RMagick uses ./configure to actually > > build the extconf.rb from extconf.rb.in. > > So there's no extconf.rb to even work with initially. > > IMO, RMagick should not be using a sh-based configure script. We > should be using a Ruby-based configure script. Perl has done this; so > should we. > > > So, yeah... If we could build ruby extensions AND the > > libraries they rely on with ./configure && make, on > > Windows... That sounds far nicer than the current hassles > > I've had trying to build complex extensions and their > > associated libraries with microsoft's tools. > > I understand that this would make your life easier, but it's not the > right answer. There *are* better answers than this, and we should take > advantage of them. The "parent" libraries may be more difficult, but > we should bitch to the upstream authors, too. > > MinGW is ... not the best choice. It's not as nearly as bad a choice > as cygwin, but it is definitely an inferior choice to VC2005. Here's a > question: what if we tried to convince Microsoft to build a > gcc-wrapper? That is, something for VC2005 that can convert gcc > command-lines to VC2005 command-lines automatically? IIRC, the Mars > compiler had something similar (cl-to-mars converter). What happens when VC2k5 goes the way of VC6? What happens when we can no longer acquire VC2k5 and Microsoft has moved on to their new VC2k7fx3 product, with new features, new tool chain, and different compatibility problems? How long until MS changes the licensing, or distribution of their toolchain in such a way that we have to move to either an open source option, or to the newest MS provided solution? 6 months? A year? 3 years? We don't know, and we can't do anything to stop them. The current MSYS+MinGW can't be pulled out from underneath us, ever. I greatly dislike the idea of relying on ANY non-open product to provide the prodominent Windows distribution of Ruby. You obviously disagree, and that's completely within your right to do. I also know you've put in a lot of work to try to get VC2k5 to compile Ruby and its dependencies, which is a great thing, and many of us appreciate the choice that that work can bring. But I also know that today, in under 10 minutes I download MSYS+MinGW + Ruby Source, and had it compiled and running test scripts. -austin > -- > Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ > * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ > * austin@zieglers.ca > > -- ===Tanner Burson=== tanner.burson@gmail.com http://tannerburson.com <---Might even work one day... ------=_Part_18794_25326155.1153498757031--