From: Mohit Sindhwani <mo_mail@...>
Date: 2010-09-17T19:12:54+09:00
Subject: Re: Developing for Ruby on Windows?

  On 17/9/2010 6:02 PM, Quintus wrote:
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> Am 17.09.2010 10:53, schrieb Tom Wardrop:
>> I've heard a lot of criticism about developing for Ruby on Windows, but
>> am yet to see anyone elaborate on this. Can someone enlighten me on why
>> developing for Ruby on Windows is considered to be painful?
>>
>> Cheers
> My personal opinion about this is that developing on Windows is not as
> hard as it used to be since the Ruby Installer + DevKit have been
> released. However, Windows stays Windows, and the thing I personally
> most miss in Windows is the #fork method and the ability to create
> multi-process programs easily. When Ruby gets rid of the GIL sometime
> and Ruby's threads will run truly concurrent, I may not miss it anymore
> (Ruby 2.0, maybe?).
> Apart from that, I just dislike non-free (free as in freedom) operating
> systems ;-)

Barring ideology, there are, in my opinion, two main annoyances in 
working with Windows..

1. Some times, it can take a while to start the Ruby interpreter - and 
Ruby runs slowly.  While an annoyance, most people don't deploy on 
Windows and a bit of extra time in starting a long(er) running program 
is fine for me.

2. Some native gems fail to build and you need to find a way around it.  
Luis' work and the DevKit, etc. are changing this situation on a daily 
basis.. so, we will get there.

Barring that, I haven't found any reason to avoid working on Windows 
using Ruby.  Some of the things that I do require Windows - for example, 
I use Win32Ole to parse Word documents to put into a Radiant CMS site... 
so, I'm happy enough working there.

Best Regards,
Mohit.
17/9/2010 | 6:11 PM.