# Win32 Extension Issues Wanted! **URL:** \ **Category:** ruby-talk\ **Created:** [27 June 2006 02:21 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495 "2006-06-27T02:21:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Austin\_Ziegler5](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/rubytalk.org/austin_ziegler5/32/1985_2.png) [@Austin\_Ziegler5](https://rubytalk.org/u/Austin_Ziegler5)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 02:21 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/1 "2006-06-27T02:21:20Z")
Everyone. I had a conversation with folks from Microsoft today about trying to move Ruby’s installer to Visual Studio 2005 and WiX (the MSI installer). They’re quite serious about trying to get us shifted to modern compiler technology rather than VC++6 or even MSYS/MINGW. I can’t say that I disagree with them, either. However, I indicated that one of the big problems that we had with Ruby 1.8.2 was the use of [VS.NET](http://VS.NET) 2003 (VC++ 7.1) and its general incompatibility – focussing on errno, because that’s the one item which stuck in my mind – with earlier and later runtimes, as well as a big problem of compatibility with MSYS/gcc and any MSVCRT (isascii, as reported by Ara Howard). They asked for as much information as I can gather on this matter. If you have had problems trying to get Ruby or an extension compiled or running on Windows for any reason, but especially because of Microsoft runtime DLL differences, please provide me as much information as possible so that I can pass it on to the VS team at Microsoft. For what it’s worth, I have Ruby itself compiled with VS 2005, although some of the extensions are not being built automatically, from what I can tell. That may be a build script problem. However, based on earlier reports of runtime version incompatibilities, it was looking like I was going to have to recompile a _lot_ of code. The discussion today suggested that as long as function accesses are used and not variable accesses, things will be okay (e.g., GetError() in Windows, not errno). The problem, as I pointed out to them, is that _most_ Unix developers only ever have to worry about a single C runtime being on their system and therefore don’t need to worry about errno being in a different runtime DLL. Ideally, they would be able to give us an external way of getting at the errno from a specific runtime that may not be “our” runtime (e.g., the runtime with which we were linked). What other problems have people had and what can you provide me as evidence? Also, can I give them your name and email for direct contact? I will be headed to Europe soon and won’t be able to respond quickly. -austin > **···** > > – > Austin Ziegler \* [halostatue@gmail.com](mailto:halostatue@gmail.com) \* [http://www.halostatue.ca/](http://www.halostatue.ca/) > \* [austin@halostatue.ca](mailto:austin@halostatue.ca) \* [http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/](http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/) > \* [austin@zieglers.ca](mailto:austin@zieglers.ca) ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Kelly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/cc9497/32.png) [@Bill\_Kelly](https://rubytalk.org/u/Bill_Kelly)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 03:14 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/2 "2006-06-27T03:14:29Z")
> They asked for as much information as I can gather on this matter. If > you have had problems trying to get Ruby or an extension compiled or > running on Windows for any reason, but especially because of Microsoft > runtime DLL differences, please provide me as much information as > possible so that I can pass it on to the VS team at Microsoft. I'm not sure if this is the sort of information you're looking for, but I've run into the occasional extension, and/or library upon which an extension relies, that essentially requires mingw/msys to build. I got RMagick (ruby ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick) to build using nmake/cl.exe, but it was a total hack. Building the extension requires ./configure. The primary function of ./configure for the RMagick build, is to analyze the GraphicsMagick/ImageMagick header files and produce a config header file wherein about 200 configuration #defines are set or cleared, adapting RMagick to whatever particular build of ImageMagick/GraphicsMagick it's working with. (What I did was install the particular version of GraphicsMagick I wanted, on my linux system, run the RMagick ./configure over there, then bring the generated rmagick\_config.h file back to my windows system. I also hacked up RMagick's extconf.rb in order to get it to work with nmake/cl.exe.) Some other extensions I suspect may require mingw/msys to build include rcairo/cairo, DataFlow/PureData, ruby-gstreamer.... The more I run into this, the happier I would be to just have ALL my ruby extensions (and ruby itself) built with mingw/msys. Regards, Bill > **···** > > From: "Austin Ziegler" \ ---
**Author:** ![Daniel\_Berger2](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/rubytalk.org/daniel_berger2/32/2243_2.png) [@Daniel\_Berger2](https://rubytalk.org/u/Daniel_Berger2)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 12:41 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/3 "2006-06-27T12:41:08Z")
Austin Ziegler wrote: > They asked for as much information as I can gather on this matter. If > you have had problems trying to get Ruby or an extension compiled or > running on Windows for any reason, but especially because of Microsoft > runtime DLL differences, please provide me as much information as > possible so that I can pass it on to the VS team at Microsoft. The only build issues I've had relate to nmake. It doesn't seem to be entirely compatible with make. For example, the last time I tried to compile bdb or pl-ruby, it choked on the Makefile. As far as running some of my extensions, sometimes I get random segfaults if I don't build with VC++ 6. The most notorious one is win32-open3. Note that Heesob had an interesting post that dealt with this issue, but now I can't find the dang thing. Regards, Dan ---
**Author:** ![Austin\_Ziegler5](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/rubytalk.org/austin_ziegler5/32/1985_2.png) [@Austin\_Ziegler5](https://rubytalk.org/u/Austin_Ziegler5)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 03:35 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/4 "2006-06-27T03:35:24Z")
Not specifically. However, part of what I really want to try to get the MS team to help us out with is a situation wereh I have ImageMagick built with MSYS, RMagick built with Visual Studio 2005 (cl 14) and Ruby built with VC++6 -- and it all Just Works. Right now, apparently, this is a nightmare and there's "no way in hell" that it would work. They're interested in helping us; I'm not about to turn down the help of the compiler writers. Which is why I need more information. -austin > **···** > > On 6/26/06, Bill Kelly \ wrote: > > > I'm not sure if this is the sort of information you're looking > > for, but I've run into the occasional extension, and/or library > > upon which an extension relies, that essentially requires > > mingw/msys to build. > > -- > Austin Ziegler \* halostatue@gmail.com \* [http://www.halostatue.ca/](http://www.halostatue.ca/) >                \* austin@halostatue.ca \* [You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue](http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/) >                \* austin@zieglers.ca ---
**Author:** ![Austin\_Ziegler5](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/rubytalk.org/austin_ziegler5/32/1985_2.png) [@Austin\_Ziegler5](https://rubytalk.org/u/Austin_Ziegler5)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 12:54 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/5 "2006-06-27T12:54:56Z")
> Austin Ziegler wrote: > \> They asked for as much information as I can gather on this matter. If > \> you have had problems trying to get Ruby or an extension compiled or > \> running on Windows for any reason, but especially because of Microsoft > \> runtime DLL differences, please provide me as much information as > \> possible so that I can pass it on to the VS team at Microsoft. > The only build issues I've had relate to nmake. It doesn't seem to be > entirely compatible with make. For example, the last time I tried to > compile bdb or pl-ruby, it choked on the Makefile. This may actually be a problem with the Makefile for bdb or pl-ruby, because while nmake is a \*variant\* of make, most "Unix" makefiles are actually GNUMake files. > As far as running some of my extensions, sometimes I get random > segfaults if I don't build with VC++ 6. The most notorious one is > win32-open3. If you're able to collect any information about that, I'd appreciate it. > Note that Heesob had an interesting post that dealt with this issue, but > now I can't find the dang thing. That would be useful if it can be found. -austin > **···** > > On 6/27/06, Daniel Berger \ wrote: > -- > Austin Ziegler \* halostatue@gmail.com \* [http://www.halostatue.ca/](http://www.halostatue.ca/) >                \* austin@halostatue.ca \* [You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue](http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/) >                \* austin@zieglers.ca ---
**Author:** ![Park\_Heesob1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/3ab097/32.png) [@Park\_Heesob1](https://rubytalk.org/u/Park_Heesob1)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 13:11 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/6 "2006-06-27T13:11:36Z")
> From: Daniel Berger \ > Reply-To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org > To: ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org (ruby-talk ML) > Subject: Re: Win32 Extension Issues Wanted! > Date: Tue, 27 Jun 2006 21:41:08 +0900 > > Austin Ziegler wrote: > > > They asked for as much information as I can gather on this matter. If > > you have had problems trying to get Ruby or an extension compiled or > > running on Windows for any reason, but especially because of Microsoft > > runtime DLL differences, please provide me as much information as > > possible so that I can pass it on to the VS team at Microsoft. > > The only build issues I've had relate to nmake. It doesn't seem to be entirely compatible with make. For example, the last time I tried to compile bdb or pl-ruby, it choked on the Makefile. > > As far as running some of my extensions, sometimes I get random segfaults if I don't build with VC++ 6. The most notorious one is win32-open3. > > Note that Heesob had an interesting post that dealt with this issue, but now I can't find the dang thing. Do you want to find [http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/190272](http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/190272) ? Regards, Park Heesob ---
**Author:** ![Ara.T.Howard6](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/958977/32.png) [@Ara.T.Howard6](https://rubytalk.org/u/Ara.T.Howard6)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 04:40 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/7 "2006-06-27T04:40:20Z")
imho microsoft would be \_\_extremely\_\_ hard pressed to deliver here: the issue isn't so much with the compiler itself, it's that any ruby built with ms compilers is going to produce a badly crippled ruby. specifically i mean that a ruby that cannot    ruby extconf && make && make install is broken. the point here is that it's not so much the compilers themselves which are the issue, but the compiler toolchain, including a minimal set of tools to bootstrap a configuration from. it's the lack of tools like make, yacc, sh, etc that make it impossible to do    cd gsl-1.8/    ./configure --prefix=/usr/local && make && sudo make install    export LD\_RUN\_PATH=/usr/local/lib/    export LD\_LIBRARY\_PATH=/usr/local/lib/    cd ruby-gsl-1.8/    ruby extconf.rb && make && sudo make install eg. a 'usable' ruby compiler should also compile third party libs that the extensions themselves are for. image magick is a perfect example of this. now, i'm well aware that mingw/msys is a bit of a mutt - but i personally think that simply compiling ruby is only half the issue. that ruby must be able to compile and link further extensions and the libs then depend on to be a 'real' ruby. so, unless the ms guys are also willing to help us put together a \_\_free\_\_ compiler toolchain that will work with an extconf.rb (or simlar) method of bootstrapping extensions \_\_and\_\_ a means to compile the libs they bootstrap against it seems little will be gained. hmmm. re-reading your post i see that you're advocating a situation in which the compiler output itself is compatible and one might use a combination of mingw/msys and vc++ tools. that would indeed be a step forward - so are you advocating producing a ruby with vc++ compilers, or are you advocating simply having the various compilers out there produce binary abi compatible output? in any case, thanks for thinking of this - it's definitely needed. cheers. -a > **···** > > On Tue, 27 Jun 2006, Austin Ziegler wrote: > > > On 6/26/06, Bill Kelly \ wrote: > > > > > I'm not sure if this is the sort of information you're looking > > > for, but I've run into the occasional extension, and/or library > > > upon which an extension relies, that essentially requires > > > mingw/msys to build. > > > > Not specifically. However, part of what I really want to try to get > > the MS team to help us out with is a situation wereh I have > > ImageMagick built with MSYS, RMagick built with Visual Studio 2005 (cl > > 14) and Ruby built with VC++6 -- and it all Just Works. > > > > Right now, apparently, this is a nightmare and there's "no way in > > hell" that it would work. They're interested in helping us; I'm not > > about to turn down the help of the compiler writers. Which is why I > > need more information. > > -- > suffering increases your inner strength. also, the wishing for suffering > makes the suffering disappear. > - h.h. the 14th dali lama ---
**Author:** ![Randy\_W\_Sims](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b487fb/32.png) [@Randy\_W\_Sims](https://rubytalk.org/u/Randy_W_Sims)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 09:16 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/8 "2006-06-27T09:16:28Z")
Austin Ziegler wrote: > > I'm not sure if this is the sort of information you're looking > > for, but I've run into the occasional extension, and/or library > > upon which an extension relies, that essentially requires > > mingw/msys to build. > > Not specifically. However, part of what I really want to try to get > the MS team to help us out with is a situation wereh I have > ImageMagick built with MSYS, RMagick built with Visual Studio 2005 (cl > 14) and Ruby built with VC++6 -- and it all Just Works. I'm not sure this is possible. This has come up quite often in the Perl community. The problem is that the C library is responsible for allocating and deallocating certain resources that cannot be shared across different run-times (memory, I/O buffers, thread synchronization objects for multi-threaded run-times, etc.) It can be worked around with proper interfaces. For instance it wouldn't matter what ImageMagick is compiled with because it provides a completely encapsulated interface; it handles its own resources. I'm not familiar with Ruby extensions, but unless Ruby provides the same encapsulation of resource management it is possible that corruptions will occur. E.g. Say you allocate memory from one run-time which gives you a handle that is valid in that run-time; then you try to free it in the other run-time, but in the other run-time it points to some random area of memory, discontinuous with the first. Boom! or worse. I also seem to recall that there is some problem with redistribution: msvcrt is available everywhere, but the newer run-times can't be distributed or something like that. I'm not sure of the particulars of that issue. I suggest contacting the folks at ActiveState.com. They have long dealt with this issue with their distributions of Perl, Python, and Tcl/Tk. They still use VC6 because of these issues. Randy. > **···** > > > On 6/26/06, Bill Kelly \ wrote: ---
**Author:** ![Austin\_Ziegler5](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex029/user_avatar/rubytalk.org/austin_ziegler5/32/1985_2.png) [@Austin\_Ziegler5](https://rubytalk.org/u/Austin_Ziegler5)\ **Post date:** [27 June 2006 12:50 UTC](https://rubytalk.org/t/win32-extension-issues-wanted/28495/9 "2006-06-27T12:50:52Z")
I understand this. However, I spent 45 minutes on the phone with the Visual Studio team yesterday, and they really seem interested in trying to make things much easier for people to work with. Aside from the ./configure && make && make install issues that Ara Howard pointed out, the \*most\* likely setup with this would probably be Ruby and all extensions compiled with VS 2005 using base libraries that may have been compiled with any other compiler and runtime. Remember: I'm collecting feedback for the VS team, not me directly. I'm aware of a number of the problems, but am looking for \*documentation\* so that we can try to have solutions made. -austin > **···** > > On 6/27/06, Randy W. Sims \ wrote: > > > I'm not sure this is possible. This has come up quite often in the Perl > > community. The problem is that the C library is responsible for > > allocating and deallocating certain resources that cannot be shared > > across different run-times (memory, I/O buffers, thread synchronization > > objects for multi-threaded run-times, etc.) > > -- > Austin Ziegler \* halostatue@gmail.com \* [http://www.halostatue.ca/](http://www.halostatue.ca/) >                \* austin@halostatue.ca \* [You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike. // halo • statue](http://www.halostatue.ca/feed/) >                \* austin@zieglers.ca