From: Dave Thomas <Dave@...>
Date: 2002-06-28T03:14:15+09:00
Subject: Re: help (ruby-talk ML)

"Lyle Johnson" <jlj@cfdrc.com> writes:

> I guess the question (which has come up before) is what really needs to be
> "fixed" in the Ruby core for Windows. I'm all for new and improved extension
> modules that make Ruby-on-Windows more powerful, but by definition those
> don't require modifications to the core. The only problem that immediately
> comes to mind is the "quirky" behavior of Ruby threads on Windows, and I'm
> not sure that anyone's nailed that one down conclusively.

Threading is the big one. Then there's also the strange subprocess
handling: last time I tried it, accessing $? after calling system()
threw an exception, for example. Handling of built-in commands also
used to be problematic.

I also see problems with the networking code: webrick keeps crashing
for me under windows.

In general, Ruby under Windows is not as stable or as reliable as
under Unix. If someone were to take charge, they could work on
building the bug list.

> > I'd love to see a couple of Windows efforts get started in earnest:
> > one to beef up Windows support in the interpreter and its libraries,
> > and the other to have the community work towards building a standard
> > Windows distribution that we can all agree on. Pragmatic Programmers
> > may not have the resources of ActiveState, but as a community we have
> > considerably more. It just needs coordinating.
> 
> See previous question about what "beefing up" Windows support in the
> interpreter and its libraries entails. Or maybe we both have the same
> question ;) And I definitely agree about farming out more of the work on
> building a Windows distribution. I for one will be glad to "adopt" some of
> the popular extensions and make sure that Windows binaries are available.
> Seems like we just need a central repository for such things.

Andy's building a metadata system which lets him build new releases
declaratively. He's currently plagued by incompatibilities between all
the different installation mechanisms and requirements that folks
use. If we could get the windows distribution train rolling, perhaps
we could also use it as a bully pulpit to bring some standardization
here too.

My ideal would be to have a community project to get Ruby support
under Windows as solid as Perl's. That means fixing stuff in the
interpreter and libraries (and, as importantly) showing a commitment
to fixing stuff in the Windows environment. Second, I'd like to see
the community come to consensus on a Windows distribution (possibly
via a SF project to set up the distribution builder). Once that's
there, it would be nice to have a system that could generate these
distributions (say daily), so we no longer had to wait for Andy to get
a spare evening to do it. Perhaps SF could do this for us too: I
haven't investigated their build system.

Cheers


Dave