[ANN] One-Click Ruby Installer for Windows 1.8.5-21 released

> I agree with this, but I wonder if there is somebody that has
> succesfully compiler Ruby with VC8. I rember somebody has started this
> process (Austin is it you?), but never heard of the final result.

I had actually started and I did get a running Ruby. But I had to do a
*lot* of extra stuff toward getting a working One-Click Installer
approach.

That's good to know, at least the result was not negative.

I have recently had time to install the appropriate development tools
on my laptop (my old Windows laptop, not a virtual environment in my
Mac, which I will be doing later), so I hope to pick this up again to
help with the effort we were talking with Microsoft about.

Please do so :-], till MS guys will not change their minds.

I am a little puzzled by Nobu's comment:

[quote]
64-bit ruby is binary incompatible with 32-bit ruby.
So it isn't concerned with 32-bit One-Click Installer.
[/quote]

What does this mean?

./alex

···

On 8/31/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/30/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:

--
.w( the_mindstorm )p.

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
               * austin@zieglers.ca

Right. Building Ruby itself is dead simple.

Now try to build the RMagick extension and get it to work. (Note: I
haven't tried it, personally. It *might* work.)

There are some tricks to getting it all to work, but at some point you
have to build your own version of a lot of libraries.

-austin

···

On 8/31/06, Brian Hicks <bwhicks@aep.com> wrote:

I did it the other day just to see if I could. I downloaded the source
from www.ruby-lang.org and followed the readme in the win32 directory
and had zero problems. I haven't tested the result much, though...

Oh yeah, this was 32-bit, also. In case anyone cares...

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
               * austin@zieglers.ca

It means that in theory, we could switch to MinGW and worry about a
64-bit OCI later. However, I think that we're going to need a 64-bit
OCI at some point sooner rather than later (although I will *not* be
able to help with that in any way). The real downside to the 64-bit
OCI, though, is that we *will* have to compile all of the supporting
libraries ourselves because no one else is yet offering 64-bit Windows
versions of their code (e.g., OpenSSL, pdcurses, etc.) for download.

-austin

···

On 8/31/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:

I am a little puzzled by Nobu's comment:

[quote]
64-bit ruby is binary incompatible with 32-bit ruby.
So it isn't concerned with 32-bit One-Click Installer.
[/quote]

What does this mean?

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
               * austin@zieglers.ca

I think he means that since 64-bit Ruby and 32-bit Ruby are completely
incompatible with each other, that it would not be necessary to choose
the same solution both. Meaning that it would be ok, for example, to
choose MinGW for 32-bit Ruby and VC++ for 64-bit Ruby.

I could be wrong, but that was how I read it.

Curt

···

On 8/31/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/31/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/30/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I agree with this, but I wonder if there is somebody that has
> > succesfully compiler Ruby with VC8. I rember somebody has started this
> > process (Austin is it you?), but never heard of the final result.
>
> I had actually started and I did get a running Ruby. But I had to do a
> *lot* of extra stuff toward getting a working One-Click Installer
> approach.
>

That's good to know, at least the result was not negative.

> I have recently had time to install the appropriate development tools
> on my laptop (my old Windows laptop, not a virtual environment in my
> Mac, which I will be doing later), so I hope to pick this up again to
> help with the effort we were talking with Microsoft about.
>

Please do so :-], till MS guys will not change their minds.

I am a little puzzled by Nobu's comment:

[quote]
64-bit ruby is binary incompatible with 32-bit ruby.
So it isn't concerned with 32-bit One-Click Installer.
[/quote]

What does this mean?

./alex

Austin Ziegler wrote:

···

On 8/31/06, Brian Hicks <bwhicks@aep.com> wrote:

I did it the other day just to see if I could. I downloaded the source
from www.ruby-lang.org and followed the readme in the win32 directory
and had zero problems. I haven't tested the result much, though...

Oh yeah, this was 32-bit, also. In case anyone cares...

Right. Building Ruby itself is dead simple.

Now try to build the RMagick extension and get it to work. (Note: I
haven't tried it, personally. It *might* work.)

There are some tricks to getting it all to work, but at some point you
have to build your own version of a lot of libraries.

-austin

Or you could just ask those who've done it. Kaspar Schiess did the Win32 versions of RMagick for several years. With practice he got it down to a 2-day task. Brett DiFrischia did the latest version, 1.13.0. That one took 6 weeks. One of the biggest problems (AFAIK) is RMagick's configure script, which has easily over 100 feature tests and of course doesn't work at all on Windows.

Hmmm... I really don't think this would be a good decission. I see
that there will be more effort needed for supporting 64-bit Ruby, but
to completely double it doesn't seem to be the best option.

just my 2 eurocents,

./alex

···

On 8/31/06, Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs@gmail.com> wrote:

On 8/31/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/31/06, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On 8/30/06, Alexandru Popescu <the.mindstorm.mailinglist@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > I agree with this, but I wonder if there is somebody that has
> > > succesfully compiler Ruby with VC8. I rember somebody has started this
> > > process (Austin is it you?), but never heard of the final result.
> >
> > I had actually started and I did get a running Ruby. But I had to do a
> > *lot* of extra stuff toward getting a working One-Click Installer
> > approach.
> >
>
> That's good to know, at least the result was not negative.
>
> > I have recently had time to install the appropriate development tools
> > on my laptop (my old Windows laptop, not a virtual environment in my
> > Mac, which I will be doing later), so I hope to pick this up again to
> > help with the effort we were talking with Microsoft about.
> >
>
> Please do so :-], till MS guys will not change their minds.
>
> I am a little puzzled by Nobu's comment:
>
> [quote]
> 64-bit ruby is binary incompatible with 32-bit ruby.
> So it isn't concerned with 32-bit One-Click Installer.
> [/quote]
>
> What does this mean?
>
> ./alex

I think he means that since 64-bit Ruby and 32-bit Ruby are completely
incompatible with each other, that it would not be necessary to choose
the same solution both. Meaning that it would be ok, for example, to
choose MinGW for 32-bit Ruby and VC++ for 64-bit Ruby.

--
.w( the_mindstorm )p.

I could be wrong, but that was how I read it.

Curt

Austin Ziegler wrote:

Right. Building Ruby itself is dead simple.

Now try to build the RMagick extension and get it to work. (Note: I
haven't tried it, personally. It *might* work.)

There are some tricks to getting it all to work, but at some point you
have to build your own version of a lot of libraries.

-austin

Or you could just ask those who've done it. Kaspar Schiess did the Win32 versions of RMagick for several years. With practice he got it down to a 2-day task. Brett DiFrischia did the latest version, 1.13.0. That one took 6 weeks. One of the biggest problems (AFAIK) is RMagick's configure script, which has easily over 100 feature tests and of course doesn't work at all on Windows.

What I did was to install the same version of ImageMagick
I wanted to use on Windows, on Linux. Then run RMagick's
./configure on Linux, then copy the resulting rmagick_config.h back over to Windows, and make a couple
manual tweaks to account for the OS differences.

Not exactly elegant, but it seems to have worked.

Regards,

Bill

···

From: "Timothy Hunter" <TimHunter@nc.rr.com>

Sorry; I was specifically referring to making it work with the freely
downloadable VC++8.

There are some ... changes there which aren't pleasant to deal with.

-austin

···

On 8/31/06, Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@nc.rr.com> wrote:

Or you could just ask those who've done it. Kaspar Schiess did the Win32
versions of RMagick for several years. With practice he got it down to a
2-day task. Brett DiFrischia did the latest version, 1.13.0. That one
took 6 weeks. One of the biggest problems (AFAIK) is RMagick's configure
script, which has easily over 100 feature tests and of course doesn't
work at all on Windows.

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
               * austin@zieglers.ca

Austin Ziegler wrote:

···

On 8/31/06, Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@nc.rr.com> wrote:

Or you could just ask those who've done it. Kaspar Schiess did the Win32
versions of RMagick for several years. With practice he got it down to a
2-day task. Brett DiFrischia did the latest version, 1.13.0. That one
took 6 weeks. One of the biggest problems (AFAIK) is RMagick's configure
script, which has easily over 100 feature tests and of course doesn't
work at all on Windows.

Sorry; I was specifically referring to making it work with the freely
downloadable VC++8.

There are some ... changes there which aren't pleasant to deal with.

-austin

Okay, I see.

Kaspar swears by mingw. Brett used VC++ 2003.

Bill Kelly wrote:

What I did was to install the same version of ImageMagick
I wanted to use on Windows, on Linux. Then run RMagick's
./configure on Linux, then copy the resulting rmagick_config.h back over to Windows, and make a couple
manual tweaks to account for the OS differences.

Not exactly elegant, but it seems to have worked.

That's what Brett and I ended up doing.

Austin Ziegler wrote:

···

On 8/31/06, Timothy Hunter <TimHunter@nc.rr.com> wrote:

Or you could just ask those who've done it. Kaspar Schiess did the Win32
versions of RMagick for several years. With practice he got it down to a
2-day task. Brett DiFrischia did the latest version, 1.13.0. That one
took 6 weeks. One of the biggest problems (AFAIK) is RMagick's configure
script, which has easily over 100 feature tests and of course doesn't
work at all on Windows.

Sorry; I was specifically referring to making it work with the freely
downloadable VC++8.

There are some ... changes there which aren't pleasant to deal with.

-austin

Well, I finally bit the bullet and installed the one-click installer
*and* Instant Rails on a Windows box. I tried installing a source "gem"
and it complained about not having "nmake", so I'm further along than I
was. Visual Studio 8 aka express is already installed.

But then, I also installed Gentoo 2006.1 in a virtual machine today ...
it never hurts to have a Plan B. :slight_smile:

To get nmake etc. you'll need the Platform SDK (downloadable from a
link on the VS8 Express website), and then you'll get that. Be warned
that some source gems won't compile anyway, and even if they do, they
won't all work well with the One-Click Installer, which is based on a
much earlier compiler and runtime.

-austin

···

On 8/31/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

Well, I finally bit the bullet and installed the one-click installer
*and* Instant Rails on a Windows box. I tried installing a source "gem"
and it complained about not having "nmake", so I'm further along than I
was. Visual Studio 8 aka express is already installed.

But then, I also installed Gentoo 2006.1 in a virtual machine today ...
it never hurts to have a Plan B. :slight_smile:

--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
               * austin@halostatue.ca * You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue
               * austin@zieglers.ca

On full VC8/7/6 (I haven't tried the Express edition) there is a batch
file vcvars32.bat or vsvars.bat (depending on VC version) that sets
paths to nmake, cl, sets include paths, etc. in a cmd session call
this batch file prior to calling gem install.

You obviously don't need to do this, if you have nmake et al. on the
path already.

The dir where this file is located is something like
%ProgramFiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio XXX\VC8\bin.

···

On 9/1/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

*and* Instant Rails on a Windows box. I tried installing a source "gem"
and it complained about not having "nmake", so I'm further along than I
was. Visual Studio 8 aka express is already installed.

Austin Ziegler wrote:

Well, I finally bit the bullet and installed the one-click installer
*and* Instant Rails on a Windows box. I tried installing a source "gem"
and it complained about not having "nmake", so I'm further along than I
was. Visual Studio 8 aka express is already installed.

But then, I also installed Gentoo 2006.1 in a virtual machine today ...
it never hurts to have a Plan B. :slight_smile:

To get nmake etc. you'll need the Platform SDK (downloadable from a
link on the VS8 Express website), and then you'll get that. Be warned
that some source gems won't compile anyway, and even if they do, they
won't all work well with the One-Click Installer, which is based on a
much earlier compiler and runtime.

-austin

I think I did download the SDK, or at least was offered the opportunity.
I had to move some "stuff" off the C: drive to make room, and I may have
forgotten to download the SDK in the process.

For what I'm planning to do with Ruby/Rails, it's not urgent that I be
able to build source gems. Right now, Ruby is a Perl
replacement/enhancement ... I'm the only one around that even cares
about Ruby, so I'm strictly using it only for one-offs that won't be
maintained by other people. Of course, I have to stop thinking in Perl. :slight_smile:

The Rails application I have in mind is a little more interesting.
Again, since there aren't any other Rubyists around, I will need to be
careful, but Rails looks like a natural for it and I don't think there's
anything "Rails-like" for Perl.

While we're on the subject of One-click and Instant Rails, Curt ... is
there some reason there are two projects and not just one? I know
Instant Rails includes MySQL and Apache and carries an older version of
Ruby, but couldn't there just be one project -- "Instant Rails" -- with
the same version of Ruby and options to install MySQL, Apache, Rails,
FreeRide, Scite, etc.? Am I shooting myself in the foot by installing
them both?

···

On 8/31/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

The Ruby in Instant Rails *is* the current version of the One-Click
Installer... well, it was until I made this 1.8.5 release. The only
reason I haven't yet released an updated Instant Rails is that I am
currently in the middle to changes to move IR from using SCGI to use
Mongrel through mod_proxy. When that work is done there will be a new
release and it will, once again, be the current version of the OCI.

Curt

···

On 9/1/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

While we're on the subject of One-click and Instant Rails, Curt ... is
there some reason there are two projects and not just one? I know
Instant Rails includes MySQL and Apache and carries an older version of
Ruby, but couldn't there just be one project -- "Instant Rails" -- with
the same version of Ruby and options to install MySQL, Apache, Rails,
FreeRide, Scite, etc.? Am I shooting myself in the foot by installing
them both?

I didn't answer your other questions...

You can install both IR and OCI. Whether or not this makes sense
really depends on what you do with Ruby. With OCI, you get things like
start menu entries and filetype associations. At some point we'll
implement an IR command that will create these same registry entries
on request.

If you install both, you might need to remember to install extensions
and RubyGems in both copies of Ruby (unless you specifically wanted a
particular package only in one of them).

···

On 9/1/06, Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs@gmail.com> wrote:

On 9/1/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:
>
> While we're on the subject of One-click and Instant Rails, Curt ... is
> there some reason there are two projects and not just one? I know
> Instant Rails includes MySQL and Apache and carries an older version of
> Ruby, but couldn't there just be one project -- "Instant Rails" -- with
> the same version of Ruby and options to install MySQL, Apache, Rails,
> FreeRide, Scite, etc.? Am I shooting myself in the foot by installing
> them both?

The Ruby in Instant Rails *is* the current version of the One-Click
Installer... well, it was until I made this 1.8.5 release. The only
reason I haven't yet released an updated Instant Rails is that I am
currently in the middle to changes to move IR from using SCGI to use
Mongrel through mod_proxy. When that work is done there will be a new
release and it will, once again, be the current version of the OCI.

Curt Hibbs wrote:

I didn't answer your other questions...

You can install both IR and OCI. Whether or not this makes sense
really depends on what you do with Ruby. With OCI, you get things like
start menu entries and filetype associations. At some point we'll
implement an IR command that will create these same registry entries
on request.

If you install both, you might need to remember to install extensions
and RubyGems in both copies of Ruby (unless you specifically wanted a
particular package only in one of them).

Yeah, that's what I meant by shooting myself in the foot. I suppose if
Windows did everything I need in a native manner, I wouldn't need
CygWin, VMware Server running Gentoo, ActiveState Perl, Python and Tcl,
etc. :slight_smile:

In the long run, I think Instant Rails (including Mongrel, of course)
plus the start menu entries and filetype associations with options not
to install MySQL and Apache is the way to go. Apache is overkill for the
applications I'm going to build, and my environment strongly prefers SQL
Server and PostgreSQL over MySQL. So I can get where I want to go by
loading OCI and doing "gem install rails", or by installing IR and
ignoring MySQL and Apache.

Does Rails work with IIS? That's another "strong environmental preference."

There's some folks out there (I forget who at the moment) who are
working on getting Rails to run natively on top of http.sys - so you
don't even need IIS - you just need XP SP2 which installs http.sys by
default. That's great for XP dev so you don't need IIS to be installed
on your XP install.

-John

···

On 9/1/06, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

Curt Hibbs wrote:
> I didn't answer your other questions...
>
> You can install both IR and OCI. Whether or not this makes sense
> really depends on what you do with Ruby. With OCI, you get things like
> start menu entries and filetype associations. At some point we'll
> implement an IR command that will create these same registry entries
> on request.
>
> If you install both, you might need to remember to install extensions
> and RubyGems in both copies of Ruby (unless you specifically wanted a
> particular package only in one of them).
Yeah, that's what I meant by shooting myself in the foot. I suppose if
Windows did everything I need in a native manner, I wouldn't need
CygWin, VMware Server running Gentoo, ActiveState Perl, Python and Tcl,
etc. :slight_smile:

In the long run, I think Instant Rails (including Mongrel, of course)
plus the start menu entries and filetype associations with options not
to install MySQL and Apache is the way to go. Apache is overkill for the
applications I'm going to build, and my environment strongly prefers SQL
Server and PostgreSQL over MySQL. So I can get where I want to go by
loading OCI and doing "gem install rails", or by installing IR and
ignoring MySQL and Apache.

Does Rails work with IIS? That's another "strong environmental preference."