From: Dennis Newbold <dennisn@...>
Date: 2002-04-10T05:50:07+09:00
Subject: Best Ruby for Windows ?

Hi All,

     To replace a difficult-to-maintain portion of a system, I've
developed a Ruby script which accesses a Ruby extension written in C
to do some of the more specialized stuff (basically wrappers around
general services that already exist).  It works fine under Linux,
but now I need to port it to Windows, as we have both a Linux and
Windows version of our software.  I've seen previous emails on this
list to the effect that the cygwin port of Ruby to windows is going
away.  That leaves mswin, djgpp, and mingw.  I've heard that Ruby
threads are broken in the mswin port, but work fine in the mingw
port.  Most of my personal experience with Ruby on Windows has been
with the mingw port, but I'm leaning toward using the mswin port
this time, as most of our other Windows programmers are more familiar
with MSVC, and so it would be easier to fold an mswin-based Ruby
program into the overall system build.

    Sorry for taking so long to get to the point -- I don't need
Ruby threads currently, but if they don't work under the mswin port,
it makes me a little nervous about what else might or might not
work correctly.  Can anyone who has used the mswin port of Ruby,
or who has ported a Ruby-based application from Linux to Windows
give me any advice / input / things to watch out for?

     Also, does anyone know if the extconf.rb / mkmf method for creating
a Ruby extension will create a usable makefile if executed on a
Windows platform using the mswin port of Ruby?

Thanks for any help / advice anyone can offer.

Dennis

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