From: Sam Smoot Date: 2008-01-02T16:15:01+09:00 Subject: Re: Windows Ruby (was Re: Zed Shaw - Ruby has dodged a bullet) On Jan 2, 12:47 am, James Britt wrote: > M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote: > > > 3. You do *not* have to buy VMware to run Windows on a Linux box > > provided your hardware has the recent enhancements that allow Xen to run > > unmodified guests. > > There are free versions of VMware one can use as well. > > James Right, well, I meant on my Mac. The point was it's just a huge pain, and I've asked about Windows C- extensions here before and I obviously still have no clue what I'm talking about when it comes to VC6 vs VC8 vs whatever... ;-) I will say I don't personally know any Windows/Ruby people using anything but the OCI. Even now that I have a fair amount of experience with *nix machines, just the idea of getting Cygwin running scares me. I won't say it's not an option for Windows devs, but I will say I don't think it's realistic for Cygwin/MiniGW (for Ruby specifically) to ever gain anywhere near the deployment OCI has. Anyways, back to Zed: Despite some people claiming "it's not that hard", people willing to write robust, stable, C extensions for Ruby are very few and far between it seems. Pure Rubyists are a dime a dozen in comparison. At least that's my perception of things.