Excuse this mixed bag but to me they all come under the heading "help me
get started!". I have a working Ruby installation on win98se and I spent
last week reading many of the Ruby intro's and the chm. This week is
"hands on" and I am using an MS Access db of mine as my focus (along with
an external program to update it). So here goes, from the general to
specific...
1) Is win32 good-enough for learning Ruby on? I have other machines (XP,
OSX) but the win98se machine is my workhorse (being a slim VAIO notebook
it lives on the kitchen table).
2) Are all the RAA files "source code" only? I have no c compiler and
would like to avoid one if poss. I have installed some "gems" but not all
RAA files are packaged as gems, correct? If I do need a c compiler can you
recommend one?
3) Taking Og as an example, where do I find the documentation? I have
tried RI but no matter what term I supply I get either "no info" or "file
not found". I can get most Ruby info from the chm but when it comes to
add-ons (any) I fail to find any documentation (I suspect I'm looking in
the wrong place).
4) Noting Q1, what's the best/easiest/quickest route to ODBC access?
5) Anyone know of a (free) way to convert an MS Access db to sqlite3?
6) I have installed gems for sqlite3 and Og but cannot find an example of
how to create an Og/sqlite3 connection. I am using the sample database
from www.pool-magic.net’s db manager. Using...
db = Og::Database.connect(
:database => 'sample.db3',
:adapter => 'sqlite3'
)
...I get "uninitialized constant Og::Database (NameError)". I can do "p
Og.methods" so I know the module has loaded ok.
And a final oddball question: given MS's marketing power do you think Ruby
is likely to get much of a foothold in the corporate sector? I'll be
learning Ruby regardless but it would be great if I could get paid work at
some (distant) point in the future.
1) Is win32 good-enough for learning Ruby on? I have other machines (XP,
OSX) but the win98se machine is my workhorse (being a slim VAIO notebook
it lives on the kitchen table).
Yes, although I personally wouldn't do it on Win98. As I noted in a
different post, all of my Ruby development at this point is on
Windows.
2) Are all the RAA files "source code" only? I have no c compiler and
would like to avoid one if poss. I have installed some "gems" but not all
RAA files are packaged as gems, correct? If I do need a c compiler can you
recommend one?
There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
in any case.
3) Taking Og as an example, where do I find the documentation? I have
tried RI but no matter what term I supply I get either "no info" or "file
not found". I can get most Ruby info from the chm but when it comes to
add-ons (any) I fail to find any documentation (I suspect I'm looking in
the wrong place).
You would need to generate the ri data for Og. If you've installed Og
as a gem, do the following:
C:\> gem_server
Browse to http;//127.0.0.1:3000/ (I *think*; the output of gem_server
will tell you the exact port) and you can read the Og documentation on
that.
4) Noting Q1, what's the best/easiest/quickest route to ODBC access?
DBI.
5) Anyone know of a (free) way to convert an MS Access db to sqlite3?
And no, many projects on RAA are Ruby-only, I think, requiring no compilation at all.
See also http://www.rubyforge.org for a sourceforge-like project repository.
···
On Sep 6, 2005, at 7:11 AM, Austin Ziegler wrote:
2) Are all the RAA files "source code" only? I have no c compiler and
would like to avoid one if poss. I have installed some "gems" but not all
RAA files are packaged as gems, correct? If I do need a c compiler can you
recommend one?
There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
in any case.
There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
in any case.
....though they might if you run Cygwin and do your Ruby development in Cygwin. With Cygwin you can get all the usual Linux GNU tools on your Windows box, including GCC, GNU Make, SQLite and so on, as well as the Cygwin version of Ruby.
(Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to mention that.)
Of course, developing under Cygwin isn't a good solution if you ultimately want your program to be a native Windows application; but if you just want to learn or want a Unix-like environment on your Windows machine, it's perfectly adequate.
As long as you don't mind foregoing nice things like Win32OLE, the
Cygwin version of Ruby is acceptable. I personally find that
inadequate. Cygwin is, as always, a poor mesh with Windows.
-austin
···
On 9/6/05, mathew <meta@pobox.com> wrote:
Austin Ziegler wrote:
> There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
> of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
> the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
> things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
> in any case.
....though they might if you run Cygwin and do your Ruby development in
Cygwin. With Cygwin you can get all the usual Linux GNU tools on your
Windows box, including GCC, GNU Make, SQLite and so on, as well as the
Cygwin version of Ruby.
(Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to
mention that.)
Of course, developing under Cygwin isn't a good solution if you
ultimately want your program to be a native Windows application; but if
you just want to learn or want a Unix-like environment on your Windows
machine, it's perfectly adequate.
I can't stand it when people pretend that it's an acceptable
environment on which to base Windows solutions. Whether this is a
"replacement command-line shell" (it isn't; I tried using cygwin's
shell for a good long time) or a platform to base a program on, it
isn't. Cygwin is a crippled POSIX environment that grants you clean
and unified access to neither all the POSIX goodness nor the Win32
goodness that's out there (and, now that I've *finally* done real
Win32 development, there's quite a bit of that out there; there's
several things that are, IMO, done much better than in POSIXland).
Again, to be clear -- it's not Cygwin that I hate. I *use* Cygwin.
It's people who pretend that it's a good fit to Windows. It isn't, and
it likely will never be.
-austin
···
On 9/6/05, mathew <meta@pobox.com> wrote:
(Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to
mention that.)
Win32OLE works in the Cygwin version of Ruby, at least for what I've
tried using it to do...
Jason
···
On 9/6/05, Austin Ziegler <halostatue@gmail.com> wrote:
As long as you don't mind foregoing nice things like Win32OLE, the
Cygwin version of Ruby is acceptable. I personally find that
inadequate. Cygwin is, as always, a poor mesh with Windows.