Cygwin's Ruby (was: Re: Whats going on!?!?)

Hi Phlip,

I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

Kind regards

robert

···

2007/10/2, Phlip <phlip2005@gmail.com>:

Get CygWin (but not its Ruby), and learn to use BASH, a real command
line interface. After a little easy tuning it's easier than mouse
abuse.

Good question; I actually rarely use my Win32 Ruby install anymore, finding
it much easier to launch everything, including Rails, from cygwin, where
all the gems have no problem building their own extlibs.

I develop in Eclipse, which of course is not a cygwin app, but I just point
it at the cygwin interpreter and forget that I have two separate
environments. I keep a cygwin bash window open (via rxvt) so I can do irb,
run scripts, etc.

···

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:15:36 +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:

I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

There might be real reasons. I just figured a newb would be better off
with the One Click Installer, because it integrates with the actual
OS, it has some lite editors and lite GUIs, etc.

I'm aware there are specific reasons not to use those things. I also
figured, for a newb, learning to use Bash and its / slashes should
come first; learning to beat a complete platform into submission, thru
Bash, should come later!

···

--
  Phlip

It's good to know that somebody has successfully done this. I've tried in
the past with mixed results - there seemed to be issues with the "DOS" path
separators "\" vs.the cygwin "/" but I can't remember the specifics.

You have inspired me to try again!

···

On 10/4/07, Jay Levitt <jay+news@jay.fm> wrote:

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:15:36 +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:

> I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

Good question; I actually rarely use my Win32 Ruby install anymore,
finding
it much easier to launch everything, including Rails, from cygwin, where
all the gems have no problem building their own extlibs.

I develop in Eclipse, which of course is not a cygwin app, but I just
point
it at the cygwin interpreter and forget that I have two separate
environments. I keep a cygwin bash window open (via rxvt) so I can do
irb,
run scripts, etc.

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

> I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

There might be real reasons. I just figured a newb would be better off
with the One Click Installer, because it integrates with the actual
OS, it has some lite editors and lite GUIs, etc.

Ah, ok. To me it sounded as if you were implying some major technical
deficiencies which I would have been curious to learn. Thanks for
clarifying!

I'm aware there are specific reasons not to use those things. I also
figured, for a newb, learning to use Bash and its / slashes should
come first; learning to beat a complete platform into submission, thru
Bash, should come later!

Hehe

Kind regards

robert

···

2007/10/7, Phlip <phlip2005@gmail.com>:

Garry Offord wrote:

It's good to know that somebody has successfully done this. I've tried in
the past with mixed results - there seemed to be issues with the "DOS" path
separators "\" vs.the cygwin "/" but I can't remember the specifics.

You have inspired me to try again!

I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

Good question; I actually rarely use my Win32 Ruby install anymore,
finding
it much easier to launch everything, including Rails, from cygwin, where
all the gems have no problem building their own extlibs.

I develop in Eclipse, which of course is not a cygwin app, but I just
point
it at the cygwin interpreter and forget that I have two separate
environments. I keep a cygwin bash window open (via rxvt) so I can do
irb,
run scripts, etc.

--
Jay Levitt |
Boston, MA | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm | - Kristoffer

Cygwin is a crutch. It's a damn good crutch -- don't get me wrong about that. But quite frankly, if you want to develop Windows applications, use native Windows tools. If you want to develop LAMP applications, use LAMP, not Cygwin emulating LAMP.

However ... specific to Ruby, now that Curt Hibbs has found it difficult to find the time to donate to the One-Click Installer and/or Instant Rails, there is a gap that needs to be filled. I'd hate to see Cygwin being the only alternative, and I'm not by any stretch of the imagination a Windows developer ready to step in with a true Windows MRI Ruby/Rails solution.

I'm guessing this answer isn't going to please a lot of people, but in my opinion, your realistic options on a Windows platform are probably jRuby and IronRuby, in that order. jRuby is in great shape as far as I can tell, and it might well be faster than Cygwin Ruby by now. I'll let John Lam speak for the status of IronRuby, but for now it looks like jRuby is a few months ahead of it.

···

On 10/4/07, Jay Levitt <jay+news@jay.fm> wrote:

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:15:36 +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

However ... specific to Ruby, now that Curt Hibbs has found it difficult
to find the time to donate to the One-Click Installer

Oh gosh.
What does making the one-click-installer actually involve?
I've never tried building ruby from source.

···

--
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/\.

I'm curious: why do you discourage usage of cygwin's ruby?

Good question; I actually rarely use my Win32 Ruby install anymore,
finding
it much easier to launch everything, including Rails, from cygwin, where
all the gems have no problem building their own extlibs.

I develop in Eclipse, which of course is not a cygwin app, but I just
point
it at the cygwin interpreter and forget that I have two separate
environments. I keep a cygwin bash window open (via rxvt) so I can do
irb,
run scripts, etc.

Cygwin is a crutch. It's a damn good crutch -- don't get me wrong about that. But quite frankly, if you want to develop Windows applications, use native Windows tools. If you want to develop LAMP applications, use LAMP, not Cygwin emulating LAMP.

Hm, cygwin is also a convenient crutch: installing and updating is pretty easy. No hassle with compiling etc.

Frankly, I had expected a bit more technical detail on deficiencies that would discount cygwin's Ruby.

I'm guessing this answer isn't going to please a lot of people, but in my opinion, your realistic options on a Windows platform are probably jRuby and IronRuby, in that order. jRuby is in great shape as far as I can tell, and it might well be faster than Cygwin Ruby by now. I'll let John Lam speak for the status of IronRuby, but for now it looks like jRuby is a few months ahead of it.

I don't do GUI programming with Ruby and cygwin's Ruby has served me well so far. I also did not notice significant performance hits (but then again, I didn't really benchmark different Ruby versions - I just always found it fast enough). So far I'm more concerned with performance on a Sun box where the Ruby install seems to crawl... :slight_smile:

Kind regards

  robert

···

On 04.10.2007 17:18, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

On 10/4/07, Jay Levitt <jay+news@jay.fm> wrote:

On Thu, 4 Oct 2007 18:15:36 +0900, Robert Klemme wrote:

From: M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [mailto:znmeb@cesmail.net]

I'm guessing this answer isn't going to please a lot of people, but in
my opinion, your realistic options on a Windows platform are probably
jRuby and IronRuby, in that order. jRuby is in great shape as far as I
can tell, and it might well be faster than Cygwin Ruby by now. I'll let
John Lam speak for the status of IronRuby, but for now it looks like
jRuby is a few months ahead of it.

Well, jRuby is quite a bit ahead of where we are right now; we've got our work cut out for us. But that said, our goal is to make IronRuby the Ruby of choice on the Windows platform ... and for the OS X browser platform as well via our cross-platform CoreCLR implementation that ships in Silverlight.

-John

Does that mean there will be any books / tutorials on using IronRuby + Silverlight coming soon? (hint hint nudge nudge)

···

On Oct 4, 2007, at 4:28 PM, John Lam (DLR) wrote:

From: M. Edward (Ed) Borasky [mailto:znmeb@cesmail.net]

I'm guessing this answer isn't going to please a lot of people, but in
my opinion, your realistic options on a Windows platform are probably
jRuby and IronRuby, in that order. jRuby is in great shape as far as I
can tell, and it might well be faster than Cygwin Ruby by now. I'll let
John Lam speak for the status of IronRuby, but for now it looks like
jRuby is a few months ahead of it.

Well, jRuby is quite a bit ahead of where we are right now; we've got our work cut out for us. But that said, our goal is to make IronRuby the Ruby of choice on the Windows platform ... and for the OS X browser platform as well via our cross-platform CoreCLR implementation that ships in Silverlight.

-John

Actually, building Ruby itself is pretty easy. The problems are
usually with the extensions that are bundled with the On-Click
Installer.

Also, the One-Click Installer is not being abandoned. I'm just giving
up the reins to someone else who has the available bandwidth to give
it the attention that is needed. I will stay involved as a helper and
advisor.

Curt

···

On 10/4/07, Matthew Rudy <matthewrudyjacobs@gmail.com> wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

> However ... specific to Ruby, now that Curt Hibbs has found it difficult
> to find the time to donate to the One-Click Installer

Oh gosh.
What does making the one-click-installer actually involve?
I've never tried building ruby from source.

Robert Klemme wrote:

Hm, cygwin is also a convenient crutch: installing and updating is pretty easy. No hassle with compiling etc.

Frankly, I had expected a bit more technical detail on deficiencies that would discount cygwin's Ruby.

The last time I checked, the Cygwin Ruby was slightly faster than the One-Click Ruby on the same machine on one benchmark -- my MatrixBenchmark. However, I'm pretty sure that was back in the Ruby 1.8.5 days -- I haven't messed with *any* Windows Ruby recently, mostly because booting my laptop into Windows takes forever. :frowning:

I don't do GUI programming with Ruby and cygwin's Ruby has served me well so far. I also did not notice significant performance hits (but then again, I didn't really benchmark different Ruby versions - I just always found it fast enough). So far I'm more concerned with performance on a Sun box where the Ruby install seems to crawl... :slight_smile:

By "Ruby install" do you mean the process of installing Ruby?

Matthew Rudy wrote:

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:

However ... specific to Ruby, now that Curt Hibbs has found it difficult
to find the time to donate to the One-Click Installer

Oh gosh.
What does making the one-click-installer actually involve?
I've never tried building ruby from source.

I don't know ... Curt posted his email address here a few days ago along with the announcement. I think there is another Win32 build of Ruby besides the One-Click and the Cygwin, but I don't remember where it is.

Interesting, but I have no intention of ever installing Silverlight. I
think I've installed AIR, but not because I really wanted it.

-austin

···

On 10/4/07, John Lam (DLR) <jflam@microsoft.com> wrote:

> I'm guessing this answer isn't going to please a lot of people, but in
> my opinion, your realistic options on a Windows platform are probably
> jRuby and IronRuby, in that order. jRuby is in great shape as far as I
> can tell, and it might well be faster than Cygwin Ruby by now. I'll let
> John Lam speak for the status of IronRuby, but for now it looks like
> jRuby is a few months ahead of it.
Well, jRuby is quite a bit ahead of where we are right now; we've got our work cut out for us. But that said, our goal is to make IronRuby the Ruby of choice on the Windows platform ... and for the OS X browser platform as well via our cross-platform CoreCLR implementation that ships in Silverlight.

--
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

From: John Joyce [mailto:dangerwillrobinsondanger@gmail.com]

Does that mean there will be any books / tutorials on using IronRuby
+ Silverlight coming soon? (hint hint nudge nudge)

While I would love to write a book on IronRuby, I feel that it's a bit premature to do so right now. What would I write that would add anything of value on the languages side over the many excellent Ruby books on the market today? On the .NET integration side of the house, I think that there may be something to say here around metaprogramming / DSL approaches to writing .NET apps, but it's way too soon to write a book like that without concrete experience.

Someday if I feel that I can't not write a book like that I'll fire up Word and start typing. But I have to ship a compiler first ... :slight_smile:

-John

Perhaps you're thinking of Ruby-mswin32. The One-Click Installer is
based on this build (with added extensions).

Curt

PS
   I can be reached off-list using curt at hibbs dot com.

···

On 10/4/07, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net> wrote:

Matthew Rudy wrote:
> M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
>
>> However ... specific to Ruby, now that Curt Hibbs has found it difficult
>> to find the time to donate to the One-Click Installer
>
> Oh gosh.
> What does making the one-click-installer actually involve?
> I've never tried building ruby from source.

I don't know ... Curt posted his email address here a few days ago along
with the announcement. I think there is another Win32 build of Ruby
besides the One-Click and the Cygwin, but I don't remember where it is.

Robert Klemme wrote:
> Hm, cygwin is also a convenient crutch: installing and updating is
> pretty easy. No hassle with compiling etc.
>
> Frankly, I had expected a bit more technical detail on deficiencies that
> would discount cygwin's Ruby.

The last time I checked, the Cygwin Ruby was slightly faster than the
One-Click Ruby on the same machine on one benchmark -- my
MatrixBenchmark. However, I'm pretty sure that was back in the Ruby
1.8.5 days -- I haven't messed with *any* Windows Ruby recently, mostly
because booting my laptop into Windows takes forever. :frowning:

Which still leaves me waiting for more flesh to the "why not use
cygwin" suggestion...

> I don't do GUI programming with Ruby and cygwin's Ruby has served me
> well so far. I also did not notice significant performance hits (but
> then again, I didn't really benchmark different Ruby versions - I just
> always found it fast enough). So far I'm more concerned with
> performance on a Sun box where the Ruby install seems to crawl... :slight_smile:

By "Ruby install" do you mean the process of installing Ruby?

Nope. I meant the Ruby installed on that box. Note: I am not
convinced that Ruby is the culprit, I rather tend to believe that it's
the Sparc processor. :slight_smile:

Kind regards

robert

···

2007/10/5, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net>:

You might consider brief stuff though. There is a growing trend from publishers to publish "short cut" PDF ebooks for very low prices that are not full-length books but more like pamphlets...
There have already been a few Rails related ones...

···

On Oct 4, 2007, at 9:21 PM, John Lam (DLR) wrote:

From: John Joyce [mailto:dangerwillrobinsondanger@gmail.com]

Does that mean there will be any books / tutorials on using IronRuby
+ Silverlight coming soon? (hint hint nudge nudge)

While I would love to write a book on IronRuby, I feel that it's a bit premature to do so right now. What would I write that would add anything of value on the languages side over the many excellent Ruby books on the market today? On the .NET integration side of the house, I think that there may be something to say here around metaprogramming / DSL approaches to writing .NET apps, but it's way too soon to write a book like that without concrete experience.

Someday if I feel that I can't not write a book like that I'll fire up Word and start typing. But I have to ship a compiler first ... :slight_smile:

-John

Robert Klemme wrote:

Nope. I meant the Ruby installed on that box. Note: I am not
convinced that Ruby is the culprit, I rather tend to believe that it's
the Sparc processor. :slight_smile:

Have you attempted to recompile from source, or is this a pre-packaged Ruby? The compilers on Solaris are pretty good, and the performance diagnosis and profiling tools are world-class, which I define as "better than Linux." :slight_smile:

True, but since it's a production system my permissions are limited
and also I'm not inclined to fiddle with the system at that level. :slight_smile:

Cheers

robert

···

2007/10/5, M. Edward (Ed) Borasky <znmeb@cesmail.net>:

Robert Klemme wrote:
> Nope. I meant the Ruby installed on that box. Note: I am not
> convinced that Ruby is the culprit, I rather tend to believe that it's
> the Sparc processor. :slight_smile:

Have you attempted to recompile from source, or is this a pre-packaged
Ruby? The compilers on Solaris are pretty good, and the performance
diagnosis and profiling tools are world-class, which I define as "better
than Linux." :slight_smile: