From: Andrew Hunt <andy@...>
Date: 2001-08-28T20:49:22+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:20466] Re: New Windows InstallShield version of Ruby

pc000@passtheaardvark.com (PaulC) says:

    >Is this really the case ? Not having the full Unix API is 
    >certainly an inconvenience but I dont believe that it is a 
    >show-stopper. The only files I could find in the standard
    >distribution which actually use fork/popen are 'popen3.rb'
    >and 'shell/process_controller.rb' (not sure what this does).

If I remember correctly "it's more subtle than that" (as Dave
is fond of saying).  It's not so much the Unix API as the whole
POSIX environment.  There are subtle differences in behavior
with regard to process control, signals, sockets, end-of-line
translation semantics, that sort of I/O stuff.

    >Lots of other heavily UNIX oriented programs have make the 
    >transition to native Windows (Apache, Perl etc) and I dont
    >think that it will be much effort for Ruby to do the same
    >outside the cygwin world (which I think is a better longer
    >term solution).

Oh I'm sure its possible, and desired, but someone needs to
do it.  Relying on a third party (like Cygwin) is a two-edged 
sword: they've worked very hard and spent a lot of time to
produce what they have, but any errors or deficiencies are
also theirs to fix, not ours.

Regards,

/\ndy