[ruby-talk:5423] Re: Trouble setting up Ruby on Win98

Anders is right. Some of this stuff is hard to find, out of date, or
incomplete.

I don't mean to be a whiner, but we should try somehow to consolidate
these files, make the instructions very clear, make them easily
accessible and well-known, etc. Dave was on this same soapbox, if I
remember right.

There was talk of an installer... what became of that? I think someone
actually asked for testers a few weeks ago, isn't that right?

Another issue I'd like to bring up is that of differing binaries of
the same version of Ruby. I gather that the version needing cygwin
is the "definitive" version? There is also one compiled with DJGPP
and one compiled with MS Visual C++.

In the first place, I am not convinced that their behavior is 100%
the same. In the second place, they cannot share DLLs. (Isn't that
true?) This hurts portability in some sense, doesn't it?

Actually, I think there may be even a fourth kind of binary -- I
think the Apollo app (which is a pretty app, in my opinion) uses a
"hacked" version of the Ruby source.

And I am even less sure of this, but isn't there some kind of COM-
related or OLE-related thing that has also hacked the Ruby source?

I like Ruby a lot. But believe me, I don't want to have five copies
of version 1.8, or even two, installed. This way lies chaos!

Hal Fulton


In article <8s261n$hgc$[e-mail]>,
  [e-mail] wrote:
> I'd like to start playing with Ruby, but I'm having trouble sorting
out
> what to download.  I'd like to find some precompiled binaries that
will
> let me run Ruby on Win98 and let me play w/ Ruby and Tk. I went to
> ftp://ftp.netlab.co.jp/pub/lang/ruby/pc/, which gave me two options:
> rbcw145.zip and rbdj145.zip.  What's the difference between the two?
> Which one do I want?  And is there a precompiled binary for the latest
> version of ruby (161)?
>
> Just for fun, I downloaded them both.  When I ran "ruby.exe" in
rbcw145,
> I got the following error:  "The rubycw.dll file cannot start.  Check
> the file to determine the probblem."  I could get rbdj145 to work, but
> it doesn't appear to have the ability to run tk. Am I missing
something?
>
> Also, what is cygwin?
>
> I checked the English language FAQ but couldn't find answers to these
> questions.  Did I overlook it?  If it's not there, some of this might
be
> worth putting in the next version.  I'm a middling part-time
programmer,
> so if I'm having trouble figuring this out, there are probably other
> folks who could use a pointer too.  This is a particularly good time
to
> to add it since I'm sure there will be plenty of newbies like myself
who
> want to give Ruby a shot given the glowing recommendations by Hunt &
> Thomas.
>
> Thanks,
> Anders Schneiderman, who is eagerly waiting for Amazon to get H&T's
> book.
> The National Journal Group
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
>

--
Hal Fulton


Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.