From: David Vallner <david@...>
Date: 2006-09-09T20:06:35+09:00
Subject: Re: ruby and ksh

ClassRubyExceptionHandline wrote:
> Hi All... I have just downloaded the ruby-1.8.5-i386-mswin32.zip file
> with the hope that I can use ruby under the Interix 2.2 ksh shell
> implementation. 

The shell isn't too relevant.

> Being somewhat familiar with Ruby, I thought I could simple run irb.bat
> by ./irb.bat similar to the way it is done under the DOS Shell.
> Howerver, when I tried it I got the following error.
> 
> $ ./irb.bat
> ./irb.bat: ./irb.bat[1]: @echo: not found
> ./irb.bat: ./irb.bat[20]: syntax error: `__FILE__' unexpected
> 

And not apparently familiar with the shells. You need to invoke a batch 
file interpreter to run a batch file. Ksh is a sh-with-extensions 
interpreter. Cmd is a batch file interpreter. $COMSPEC ./irb.bat might 
have worked.

> So... since I can't seem to locate any documentation on this
> implementation, I need some guidance.  Is there something I need to add
> to my .profile to make this work.  I'm on Interix 2.2  (MS hasn't
> released an SFU for Windows XP Home yet).
> 

And never will. SFU is abandoned to the best of my knowledge, and MS is 
adding POSIX support into Windows into the core APIs, not using a 
compatibility layer nowadays.

Also,
A) http://www.interix.com/tools/warehouse.htm

There's the 1.8.2 ruby for Interix.

On Windows, I'd just use the one-click installer. I have very, very 
severe doubts about the Interix backend making the implementation 
"better" in any way. SFU is just a compatibility layer that tends to 
integrate better with Cygwin (I heard), not an actual POSIX 
implementation. Unless you really, really need Kernel#fork (pretty much 
the only thing I can recall of the native versions not supporting), just 
use the MSVC or Mingw32 builds - those are supported and kept up-to-date 
by the fluffy people at garbagecollect.

David Vallner