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comp.lang.ruby

[ANN] Yet another Windows installer

Phillip Gawlowski

3/12/2008 12:54:00 AM

Hello, list.

I've taken the liberty to submit a new RubyForge project: The Ruby
Widnows Distribution.

Why?
Because there is no easy installable "plain" Ruby package for Windows.

While it is similar to the Ruby One Click Installer, it differs widely
in scope: It will only include RubyGems (for now), to provide a "clean
slate" Ruby distribution.

I don't really need the One-Click Installer anymore, and while it
provides a great starting point and all in one package, it provides more
stuff than I need, I think that others are in a similar position.

Also, the Ruby distribution on garbagecollect[0] is missing some (two,
actually) DLLs to work out of the box. This project intends to fix that
problem, while providing the ease of use of the One Click Installer
(registering extensions, PATH, etc.).

I hope to be able to commit the NSIS installer script and Rakefile to
build the installer ASAP, together with a usable web presence for the
project.

Thank you for your time.

- Phillip Gawlowski

Footnotes:
[0] http://www.garbagecollect.jp/ruby/mswin32/en/download/re...
31 Answers

James Tucker

3/13/2008 12:45:00 PM

0


On 12 Mar 2008, at 00:53, Phillip Gawlowski wrote:
> While it is similar to the Ruby One Click Installer, it differs
> widely in scope: It will only include RubyGems (for now), to provide
> a "clean slate" Ruby distribution.

So presumably that includes zlib in order for rubygems to work, but
would you mind explaining the meaning minimal, or more particularly,
can you tell us which extensions you include in the release at what
versions? Presumably, you're working off of VC 6?

Phillip Gawlowski

3/13/2008 6:20:00 PM

0

James Tucker wrote:
>
> On 12 Mar 2008, at 00:53, Phillip Gawlowski wrote:
>> While it is similar to the Ruby One Click Installer, it differs widely
>> in scope: It will only include RubyGems (for now), to provide a "clean
>> slate" Ruby distribution.
>
> So presumably that includes zlib in order for rubygems to work, but
> would you mind explaining the meaning minimal, or more particularly, can
> you tell us which extensions you include in the release at what
> versions? Presumably, you're working off of VC 6?

Only Rubygems at its current release version.

The package will include zlib, and readlines support.

And while I'd love to compile Ruby, it's impossible for me to obtain a
VC6 compiler, so I'll simply grab the Ruby binary off of
garbagecollect.jp (same source as the One Click Installer), add the
needed support, and that's it, more or less.

To sum up:

- Current Ruby release (I'll probably create a Ruby 1.9 package, too)
- Current Rubygems
- zlib, readlines
- An easy to use installer package (file associations, .inputrc for
European users, etc.)

It's possible that it'll include RCov, rake, and/or similar packages
used for development, but not in the first release.

I am, however, open to suggestions as which gems / libraries should be
included in the future.

- Phillip Gawlowski

Phillip Gawlowski

3/14/2008 8:49:00 AM

0

Since my reply seems to have been swallowed, the second try:

James Tucker wrote:
>
> On 12 Mar 2008, at 00:53, Phillip Gawlowski wrote:
>> While it is similar to the Ruby One Click Installer, it differs widely
>> in scope: It will only include RubyGems (for now), to provide a "clean
>> slate" Ruby distribution.
>
> So presumably that includes zlib in order for rubygems to work, but
> would you mind explaining the meaning minimal, or more particularly, can
> you tell us which extensions you include in the release at what
> versions? Presumably, you're working off of VC 6?

Only Rubygems at its current release version.

The package will include zlib, and readlines support.

And while I'd love to compile Ruby, it's impossible for me to obtain a
VC6 compiler, so I'll simply grab the Ruby binary off of
garbagecollect.jp (same source as the One Click Installer), add the
needed support, and that's it, more or less.

To sum up:

- Current Ruby release (I'll probably create a Ruby 1.9 package, too)
- Current Rubygems
- zlib, readlines
- An easy to use installer package (file associations, .inputrc for
European users, etc.)

It's possible that it'll include RCov, rake, and/or similar packages
used for development, but not in the first release.

I am, however, open to suggestions as which gems / libraries should be
included in the future.

- Phillip Gawlowski

Roger Pack

3/14/2008 5:13:00 PM

0

Sounds like it might be useful for those that want a "smaller install"
(I would be one).
You might want to consider joining the Ruby OCI (One Click Installer)
mailing list and bouncing your ideas off them.
If you were able to add your package as an "option" next to the typical
OCI it would get WAY more publicity. I know I would probably download
it.

A couple of thoughts:

What about gettext and openssl packages? Those are...vaguely useful.
And iconv?
You might be able to get a far smaller download if you don't include the
Rdoc stuff, maybe some other stuff.

> And while I'd love to compile Ruby, it's impossible for me to obtain a
> VC6 compiler, so I'll simply grab the Ruby binary off of
> garbagecollect.jp (same source as the One Click Installer), add the
> needed support, and that's it, more or less.

If you wanted to live the edge you could compile it with mingw :)
If you try hard I'm sure you can find a VC6 compiler around.

GL.
-R
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Phillip Gawlowski

3/14/2008 5:28:00 PM

0

Roger Pack wrote:
> Sounds like it might be useful for those that want a "smaller install"
> (I would be one).
> You might want to consider joining the Ruby OCI (One Click Installer)
> mailing list and bouncing your ideas off them.

Good point. And one which I didn't consider. D'oh.

> If you were able to add your package as an "option" next to the typical
> OCI it would get WAY more publicity. I know I would probably download
> it.

It'd help, anyway.

> A couple of thoughts:
>
> What about gettext and openssl packages? Those are...vaguely useful.
> And iconv?

I'll have to look into that, and see if they are included with the Ruby
binary or not.

> You might be able to get a far smaller download if you don't include the
> Rdoc stuff, maybe some other stuff.

Well, Ruby (just the binaries) weighs in at roughly 10 MB, and the
documentation is well compressed (it being text and all ;).

I was thinking about slimming Ruby down, though.

>
>> And while I'd love to compile Ruby, it's impossible for me to obtain a
>> VC6 compiler, so I'll simply grab the Ruby binary off of
>> garbagecollect.jp (same source as the One Click Installer), add the
>> needed support, and that's it, more or less.
>
> If you wanted to live the edge you could compile it with mingw :)

That's a good idea, and I actually do have a MSYS/MinGW toolchain on
this computer..

> If you try hard I'm sure you can find a VC6 compiler around.

At least not on MS's website (well, I could downgrade if I would shell
out for a recent VS2005/8 version, but I'm unwilling to do so..)

- Phillip

Roger Pack

3/14/2008 5:36:00 PM

0

> That's a good idea, and I actually do have a MSYS/MinGW toolchain on
> this computer..

Yeah it works and produces (in my opinion) a better ruby...it's just so
edgy that peoples' gems don't use it right :_
right way is
=~ /mswin32|mingw/
so it doesn't work natively with everything :)

I wonder if you could just rename RUBY_PLATFORM to be mswin32_mingw or
something and then live happy :)
Take care.
-R
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Phillip Gawlowski

3/14/2008 6:31:00 PM

0

Roger Pack wrote:
>> That's a good idea, and I actually do have a MSYS/MinGW toolchain on
>> this computer..
>
> Yeah it works and produces (in my opinion) a better ruby...it's just so
> edgy that peoples' gems don't use it right :_
> right way is
> =~ /mswin32|mingw/
> so it doesn't work natively with everything :)
>
> I wonder if you could just rename RUBY_PLATFORM to be mswin32_mingw or
> something and then live happy :)
> Take care.
> -R

Hm, I'll have to look deeper into GCC than I'd like to find out if that
works.

Theoretically, since my GCC install links against msvcrt.dll, extensions
should still work.

I haven't yet tried to build Ruby myself, however.

Well, I wasn't planning on doing anything on Sunday, anyway. :P

- Phillip

Roger Pack

3/14/2008 6:44:00 PM

0

http://www.ruby-...to...
has some links to an "almost auto" mingw download+compile (basically
it's reduced to a rake task). I'm not sure if he has all the
dependencies linked in, but I think he does.
That would be far better than the painful experience I experienced
getting all the dependencies installed.

(my notes on the process:
http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Win32Mi...)


> Hm, I'll have to look deeper into GCC than I'd like to find out if that
> works.
>
> Theoretically, since my GCC install links against msvcrt.dll, extensions
> should still work.

Yeah the extensions worked for me.
--
Posted via http://www.ruby-....

Phillip Gawlowski

3/14/2008 7:45:00 PM

0

Roger Pack wrote:
> http://www.ruby-forum.com/to...
> has some links to an "almost auto" mingw download+compile (basically
> it's reduced to a rake task). I'm not sure if he has all the
> dependencies linked in, but I think he does.
> That would be far better than the painful experience I experienced
> getting all the dependencies installed.
>
> (my notes on the process:
> http://wiki.rubyonrails.org/rails/pages/Win32Mi...)

Ah, that's sure to come in handy. Thanks.

>
>> Hm, I'll have to look deeper into GCC than I'd like to find out if that
>> works.
>>
>> Theoretically, since my GCC install links against msvcrt.dll, extensions
>> should still work.
>
> Yeah the extensions worked for me.

That's good news.

Well, I'll go through the info in the links with a fine comb, and find
out how much I'll have to do. :P

-- Phillip

_why

3/15/2008 5:34:00 PM

0

On Sat, Mar 15, 2008 at 02:12:38AM +0900, Roger Pack wrote:
> What about gettext and openssl packages? Those are...vaguely useful.
> And iconv?

Oh oh. (Hand.) A suggestion for doing minimal iconv: use the tml's
iconv lib, which is much smaller on Windows than the normal iconv.
I discovered these while trying to slim down the Shoes distro for
Windows.
<http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/gnome/binaries/win32/depende...

The package is at the bottom (win_iconv_dll-tml) and it is basically
the iconv API backed by the unicode support native to Windows.

_why