From: Luis Lavena Date: 2007-10-01T09:55:05+09:00 Subject: Re: Will 1.8.6 remain compiled with VC6? On 30 sep, 14:57, "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" wrote: > > Yes, let's take this to Ruby-Talk so we can all participate. Most of the > open source projects I deal with on Windows have gone to || stayed with > MinGW/MSYS and its friends. Ruby seems to be the exception. I remember > the past discussions and my own point of view was that it didn't really > matter to me as long as the gems && other C/C++ libraries were available > in binary form and in source form if their licenses required it. I don't > *need* to build from source on Windows, although I wouldn't refuse the > opportunity to do so. > Maybe you're right, cross-posting this could get more answers from actual ruby-mswin32 users. The concern about gems and other C/C++ libraries in "binary form" is why I started this. Trying to get VC8 to compile extensions that where only available to *nix platforms (Take for example Mongrel). Ruby-VC6 make this a nightmare. Even VC71. Lucky me I recovered a lost Visual Studio 97 we had on office and installed VC6. Now mswin32 users of Mongrel have a binary gem to use and enjoy. > So while I know that VC8 is a "better" compiler than MinGW/MSYS, what > other open source projects, if any, use VC8? How many others use VC6? I wonder why you quoted 'better' when talking about VC8 :-) MinGW/MSYS reduces the overwork getting something build/updated on Windows, take as example Ruby. I worked almost 3 days in a row to get all the Ruby dependencies (as I listed that before) compile and properly run with VC8. That was a huge amount of time "invested" in. On the other side, get almost every extension bundled with ruby build under MinGW took me less than a day (Using MinGWports and GnuWin32 source packages). VC6 is no longer in use for Python or Subversion, both of the bigger OSS I have seen. Sometimes a lot of projects (like wxWindows) compiles better with MinGW, since there is no maintainer for the nmake-compatible makefiles or the msbuild solution files. > What are the licensing gotchas on the Intel compiler? In general, are > open source projects on Windows doomed to be second-class citizens? :( ICC requires us having a Intel license, from compiling Ruby to creating extensions. As I said before, the thing about VC6/VC8 is not about is the right compiler or faster compiler, but I was considering the problems most developers face when creating/maintaining extensions for Ruby.