From: Austin Ziegler Date: 2006-07-22T15:18:13+09:00 Subject: Re: One-Click Installer: MinGW? or VC2005? On 7/21/06, Patrick Hurley wrote: > I love Ruby and will use it under Linux and Win32 regardless of the > final decision that is made. I would say that if Microsoft was willing > to provide some tools or bounties on a tool chain that would allow > people using their OS to make better use of more Open Source libraries > (autoconf, bash, etc) - with their compiler at the core that would > probably be best - and while I am dreaming how do they feel about > providing a Unix like fork API . They may. I don't know. What I *can* say is that before I went on vacation, I was on a conference call with several VC++ development team members and they seemed interested in figuring out what can be done to make it easier/better to build Ruby and extensions with the latest Visual Studio. So ... let me make a very public call: let this issue rest for a few weeks. I am still about two weeks from finishing my vacation and I cannot meaningfully talk to Microsoft about these and other issues until then. I will be getting Curt and a couple of other people who have posted exceptionally insightful posts involved with the larger discussion. It may be that we could convince Microsoft to have a gcc command-line compatibility mode tool or something like that. It may be that there are other options. The issue is most visible on Windows right now because of the proliferation of compilers available (gcc has strangled most others on other platforms), but the reality is that the Ruby toolchain needs to be built better and more cross-platform. No one so far has stepped up to do that, and I will *freely* state that I'm not qualified to do it. Someone needs to make extconf.rb and other tools much more platform-neutral so that we aren't bitten by people putting compiler/platform-specific CFLAGS in their extconf.rb. Talking about *that* would be far more productive than trying to force the decision on MinGW or VS at this point. I have been *very* insistent with Microsoft that whatever happens, we need to have a way that we can end up trusting the results of someone who compiles with MinGW (because the library that they're working on doesn't build well with VC++) or with VS8. That's why I've been asking for much more information than I've been getting until this thread. Without this sort of information, I can't show Microsoft how frustrating the situation is for Ruby developers on Windows. Mainly because my goal is a better, faster, *more up to date*, and more stable Ruby on Windows. I don't actually do any extension compiling on Windows (well, not usually). -austin -- Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/ * austin@halostatue.ca * http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/ * austin@zieglers.ca