From: Charles Oliver Nutter <charles.nutter@...>
Date: 2008-11-05T04:05:17+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] FFI 0.1.1 (Foreign Function Interface) for Ruby 1.8.6/7 and 1.9

Dominic Sisneros wrote:
> C:\jruby-1.1.5\samples\ffi>jruby win32api.rb
> null:1:in `const_missing': uninitialized constant POSIX::FFI (NameError)
>         from ffi.rb:4
>         from ffi.rb:1:in `require'
>         from win32api.rb:1

That sample could be behind the times...play with it a bit and see what 
you can see. None of the core JRuby devs use Windows on a regular 
basis...I think this was just a quick experiment created early in FFI 
dev cycle.

FWIW, I believe someone (Dan Berger, probably) is working on a full FFI 
win32api impl. He could use some help.

> For MRI, it tries to compile
> 
> C:\jruby-1.1.5\samples\ffi>gem install ffi
> Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
> ERROR:  Error installing ffi:
>         ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
> 
> c:/ruby/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb install ffi
> creating Makefile
> 
> nmake
> 'nmake' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
> operable program or batch file.

We need to get a win32 binary FFI gem released. I think one or two 
people are working on that. Jump on Ruby FFI mailing lists if you are 
interested in helping.

- Charlie