From: Luis Lavena Date: 2011-07-13T05:41:51+09:00 Subject: [ANN] RubyInstaller 1.8.7-p352 released Hello! As you all know, over the years RubyInstaller has replaced the once known and well loved One-Click Installer. And during that time, we've released versions of RubyInstaller that support Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.2. We've worked very closely with Ruby-Core (the developers and contributors of Ruby) to help ensure that each new version of Ruby properly supports Windows platforms. Our goal has always been that RubyInstaller be simple to use, slim, and upgradeable while providing a balanced set of features normally used by average Ruby developers and users. While performing this sometimes difficult balancing act between feature bloat and usefulness, we've removed features that weren't used, or features that were not interesting to most people. But this balancing act has always been somewhat of a problem as some of these features were advertised in books and older tutorials. This readily available documentation for the One-Click installer, but not the RubyInstaller, made it difficult to explain to newcomers why some of these features were no longer present in the newer RubyInstaller. One particular feature that has been missing from past RubyInstaller's is Tcl/Tk support. Ruby's Standard Library includes support for Tk, a cross-platform GUI library that, when combined with the Tcl scripting language, provides a basic, yet one of the most 'stable' GUI toolkit libraries out there. The Tcl/Tk library in combination with Ruby's Tk extension enables you to quickly and easily write GUI applications in Ruby Since the first release of RubyInstaller, Tcl/Tk support has been missing. The requirements for us to be able to integrate Tcl/Tk in an automated way into our build recipes and while minimizing conflicts with end-users systems prevented us from delivering Tcl/Tk support in the past. Missing Tcl/Tk support has been a long standing issue of RubyInstaller, until now. Thanks primarily to the hard work of Boško Ivanišević, RubyInstaller is now able to build and provide a working Tcl/Tk installation that meets our basic requirements: * It has been automated into our build recipes, ensuring updates can be made more easily. * It does not interfere with other Tcl/Tk installations you might have in your system (e.g. ActiveState's ActiveTcl) Following our long standing opt-in policy, you have the ability to decide if you want to install the Tcl/Tk GUI toolkit or not. Thanks to Jon Maken's efforts, the installers now offer you this option on new installations starting with this 1.8.7 release, and will be part of future installers such as the upcoming 1.9.2 and 1.9.3 releases. If you install Ruby using our 7-Zip archives, don't worry as we've also included Tcl/Tk support in the archives. Also with this release, we are upgrading RubyInstaller's Development Kit to version 4.5.2. Known as 'DevKit', it is nothing less than a stable set of MinGW and MSYS artifacts that provides a compiler toolchain and others tools to ease the installation of some native source gems on Windows. The new DevKit is based on TDM's variant of GCC. Last, but not least, we are about to roll out a few more interesting announcements to the list. Stay tuned for our 'RubyInstaller Extras' email :-D OK, onto the Ruby 1.8.7 release... In combination with the rest of the RubyInstaller team, I'm very pleased to announce the release of RubyInstaller packages for Ruby 1.8.7-p352 As usual, installer and 7z packages are available at RubyInstaller website and RubyForge for download: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167 For verification, MD5 signatures of each file released are provided: a1932b26031576a6d3fd8cf3f23ec312 *ruby-1.8.7-p352-doc-chm.7z 253d57ce56dc819d312edca1129d4b5b *ruby-1.8.7-p352-i386-mingw32.7z ac56ea30df53bf782c95754b13e296e0 *rubyinstaller-1.8.7-p352.exe Installer is also digitally signed to avoid alterations and UAC warnings. You can read Ruby's own announcement here: http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/385075 = What's new? Beyond what is covered by Ruby itself, we have our own set of improvements: * Enhancements: * Add support for Tcl/Tk 8.5.10 in recipes, installers, and archives * Upgraded Ruby 1.8.7 to patchlevel 352 * Upgraded RubyGems to 1.7.2 on all versions of Ruby * Upgraded rb-readline to version 0.4.0 * Upgraded OpenSSL to 1.0.0d on all versions of Ruby * Build Ruby using GCC 4.5.2 (TDM-1 release) * Change from MIT license to Modified BSD License (3-clause) * Deprecations: * Installers now enforces Windows XP as minimum OS. GH-54 -- Luis Lavena AREA 17 - Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add, but rather when there is nothing more to take away. Antoine de Saint-Exupéry