Rubyinstaller devel - Jun 2009 - RubyInstaller: Building installers story and news

Hey guys,

Sometimes is good to be wrong.

Back in 2008 I said that going MSI and WiX was going to be the best
option from the "Administrative point of view"

At the end, I ended neglecting the XML files that WiX uses on every
bumping of version of Ruby, all that because updating those XML
failed.

I take the responsibility of that, and was one of the things that
slowed (to snail speed would say) the development and release cycle of
Ruby Installer.

After my last weekend struggling with WiX, and even contributions by
Bosko with some WiX changes to make it work, I decided to drop it.

As replacement, I''ve decided to go back to the basic and the tool I
know best: InnoSetup.

Hacked some basic scripts and then updated those to do more stuff
automatically. Hooked back in Rake and...

We have preview1!!!

http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/

What to expect from this version:

After installation, you can access Ruby from the program folder at the
Start menu of Windows.
>From there, you can:
- Start an Interactive Ruby console (IRB), from where you can try
quick Ruby code.
- Start a command prompt with Ruby in the PATH. This is needed since
the installer do not modify your Windows PATH to not conflict with
previous installation.
- Access documentation links from Ruby-Doc.

Things to come soon:
- Offer an option to add Ruby to your PATH.
- Integrate Programming Ruby book (CHM)
- Integrate Ruby documentation in searchable way (CHM)

Quick FAQ:

Q: Why you uploaded those to rubyinstaller.org and not RubyForge?
A: Because are preview versions and very very alpha state. Even they
worked for me, doesn''t mean will work on every environment. Wanted to
avoid all end-users download it and break their current environments.

Q: Can I install Ruby 1.8 and 1.9 at the same time?
A:  Yes, Ruby 1.8 will be installed by default to C:\Ruby, while 1.9
will install into C:\Ruby19. This is by default since 1.8 and 1.9
offer a different API and will interfere with some RubyGems.

Q: Why the installers are so small?
A: Because they only contains Ruby and RubyGems

Q: What happened to all these nice things One-Click Installer had bundled?
A: These are no longer integrated, long to explain

Q: Why on earth no? Please explain
A: This version of Ruby has been built with MinGW (GCC), not Visual
Studio (VC6).

Original One-Click installers used VC6, a 12 years old compiler.

In the original installers, lot of gems and packages where bundled.
Some of those packages hasn''t been updated in years. Some of those
lacks testing tools to ensure they work as expected with this version
of Ruby.

Instead of invest RubyInstaller Team''s time on fixing those, we
decided to invest our time improving the user experience on Windows.

We acknowledge some gems will not work, and some others will not
install. That''s why we provided a Development Kit and plan ease the
process.

The Development Kit contains the needed tools to compile or
successfully install gems that are not ready for this version of Ruby.
You can find the downloads in the link above.

Q: Got it, but what if I want those gems works now?
A: If they don''t work out of the box with Development Kit installed,
please contact the gem Author and make them aware of this
compatibility issue.

Q: I''ve tried to contact the gem author and he said he don''t
have
windows to build a gem for me.
A: That''s understandable. We can''t force everyone have a
Windows
license, a virtual machine and the time to release Windows binaries of
those gems.

For that purpose, RubyInstaller Team created "rake-compiler" tool.

http://rubyforge.org/projects/rake-compiler
http://github.com/luislavena/rake-compiler

With this tool they can compile and build gems for Windows users from
Linux or Mac OSX operating systems.

There are already other authors using it, so they can take a look to
those references for implementation:

http://wiki.github.com/luislavena/rake-compiler/projects-using-rake-compiler

Q: Cool, going to test it, what to do if I find a bug or suggestion?
A: Please submit those to RubyForge tracker:

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?group_id=167

Q: What if I want to contribute to it?
A: You''re welcome!

Documentation, patches, improve the process, all those are really
appreciated. Please join us at rubyinstaller-devel mailing list:

http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubyinstaller-devel

Introduce yourself and what would you like to get improved, done or fixed.

We are a friendly bunch of users and developers that care about Ruby
on Windows :-)

Q: Thank you!
A: Thanks to you! And don''t forget to Vote for the website contest:

http://blog.mmediasys.com/2009/06/23/rubyinstaller-get-ready-to-vote/

Last but no least, I''ll like to the people that contributed with
patches, code, ideas and feedback during this process. In no special
order:

Curt Hibbs
Gordon Thiesfeld
Lars Christensen
Roger Pack
Timothy Elliott
Bosko Ivanisevic
James Tucker
Fabio Akita
Dr Nic Williams

Cheers,
-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

Hi,

I''ve just downloaded the 1.86 preview and it''s been really
good so
far. I have found a minor issue when testing the uninstallation, but  
the "Group" dropdown on the RubyForge bug report form doesn''t
currently list the previews as an option:

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=add&group_id=167&atid=715

Thanks,

--
Stuart Ellis
http://www.stuartellis.eu

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 4:44 PM, Stuart Ellis<stuart at stuartellis.eu>
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I''ve just downloaded the 1.86 preview and it''s been
really good so far. I
> have found a minor issue when testing the uninstallation, but the
"Group"
> dropdown on the RubyForge bug report form doesn''t currently list
the
> previews as an option:
>
> http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=add&group_id=167&atid=715
>
Ups, forgot about "that".

Feel free to add now your report, the group is "Installer (preview
version)"
> Thanks,
Thank you!
-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

On Sun, Jun 28, 2009 at 8:54 AM, Luis Lavena <luislavena at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> We have preview1!!!
>
> http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/
Great work! Downloaded and installed the Ruby 1.9.1 package, and for
the first time had no problems with installing the pg gem. My Rails
environment was up and running in a matter of minutes. Thank you.

--
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

> Great work! Downloaded and installed the Ruby 1.9.1 package, and for
> the first time had no problems with installing the pg gem. My Rails
> environment was up and running in a matter of minutes. Thank you.
was that with the devkit then?
just wondering.
=r

On Tuesday, July 7, 2009, Roger Pack <rogerdpack at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> Great work! Downloaded and installed the Ruby 1.9.1 package, and for
>> the first time had no problems with installing the pg gem. My Rails
>> environment was up and running in a matter of minutes. Thank you.
>
> was that with the devkit then?
> just wondering.
> =r
Yes, I had installed the devkit.

-- 
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Matt H<matt at smajn.net>
wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 7, 2009, Roger Pack <rogerdpack at gmail.com> wrote:
>> [...]
>>
>> was that with the devkit then?
>> just wondering.
>> =r
>
> Yes, I had installed the devkit.
>
Awesome! I''m working on a tutorial, in the lines of what I''ve
put for
MySQL and SQLite3, but for installing the MySQL binding and link with
MySQL 5.1

I believe there is lot of value in a PostgreSQL one. Would you mind
share your steps so I can create a blog post from it?

I''m not savvy on PostgreSQL to be doing it myself :-P

Thank you.
-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

> I believe there is lot of value in a PostgreSQL one. Would you mind
> share your steps so I can create a blog post from it?
When finished, how about adding a quick link on
http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/tutorials to your
Ruby-And-PostgreSQL-on-Windows tutorial?

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 11:58 AM, Jon<jon.forums at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> When finished, how about adding a quick link on
http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/tutorials to your
Ruby-And-PostgreSQL-on-Windows tutorial?
Wow, didn''t know we had a Tutorials page, and neither a Home one!

I personally thank you Jon for all the effort and time you have
invested in the Wiki and all the documentation you started to collect
and put in order.

Thank you!

-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

2009/6/28 Luis Lavena <luislavena at gmail.com>
>
> We have preview1!!!
>
Hey Luis,

I''ve now installed both the 1.8.6 and 1.9 versions of Ruby along with
the
devkit onto my fresh install of Windows 7; it''s all working great. This
will
be my primary environment from now on. Thank you my friend for all of your
hard work on getting thus far, and thanks also to the rest of the community.

I''ve also installed Gordon''s Pik and that too is working
nicely, so my
thanks to you Gordon for a fantastically useful little gem.

Cheers guys!

Charles
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> I personally thank you Jon for all the effort and time you have
> invested in the Wiki and all the documentation you started to collect
> and put in order.
> 
> Thank you!
My pleasure.  I plan to finish the FAQ and start the Building Compatible
Extensions page shortly...finding time, of course, is the issue for all of us,
eh? :)

I think the combination of the GitHub wiki with a lot of detailed developer
focused content cross-linked with the new rubyinstaller site will be a huge
value add.  While Google is our friend, it really does help to have a lot of the
key info summarized (with links to other sites) in one place.  This is
especially true for the native extensions issue.  A good starting point to
launch from.

..and ** THANKS ** again for your continued efforts in enabling, and keeping
people''s focus on, providing a great Ruby experience on Windows
platforms!

Jon

> My pleasure. ?I plan to finish the FAQ and start the Building Compatible
Extensions page shortly...finding time, of course, is the issue for all of us,
eh? :)
A wiki page for the "build compatible extensions" might be good.  I
suggested earlier a isitmingw.rubyinstaller.org [a la
http://isitruby19.com/ ] but that might be overkill, plus doesn''t
allow for editing like a wiki does.

=r

> A wiki page for the "build compatible extensions" might be good. 
I
> suggested earlier a isitmingw.rubyinstaller.org [a la
> http://isitruby19.com/ ] but that might be overkill, plus doesn''t
> allow for editing like a wiki does.
> 
> =r
Being able to edit the Building Compatible Extensions wiki page is crucial at
the beginning as I plan on asking you, Luis, and a couple others to review and
help cleanup any issues with the info.

I''ve found your blog posts and emails on ruby core very helpful and
think we should summarize some of it on the GitHub site as well as add links to
the Tutorial page to your future tutorial style posts dealing with
Ruby-on-Windows issues.

That said, I also see value in being able to disable editing the wiki page once
we''re comfortable with the content.  I haven''t found a way to
disable edits yet but hopefully I''ll get an answer to my github google
group question.

That said, maybe this iea is overkill and there''s no need to lock down
the Current version of the page.

Thoughts?

> That said, maybe this iea is overkill and there''s no need to lock
down the Current version of the page.
Yeah I''d say lock it down only if and after there are problems [like
spam or what not] :)
=r

On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 4:32 AM, Luis Lavena<luislavena at gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 8, 2009 at 12:49 AM, Matt H<matt at smajn.net> wrote:
>> On Tuesday, July 7, 2009, Roger Pack <rogerdpack at gmail.com>
wrote:
>>> [...]
>>>
>>> was that with the devkit then?
>>> just wondering.
>>> =r
>>
>> Yes, I had installed the devkit.
>>
>
> Awesome! I''m working on a tutorial, in the lines of what
I''ve put for
> MySQL and SQLite3, but for installing the MySQL binding and link with
> MySQL 5.1
>
> I believe there is lot of value in a PostgreSQL one. Would you mind
> share your steps so I can create a blog post from it?
I decided to upgrade to PostgreSQL 8.4 last night and I went ahead and
tracked the progress, took a bunch of screenshots and made a post
about it here:

<http://blog.smajn.net/2009/07/installing-ruby-191-rails-232-and.html>

-- 
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

> I decided to upgrade to PostgreSQL 8.4 last night and I went ahead and
> tracked the progress, took a bunch of screenshots and made a post
> about it here:
>
>
<http://blog.smajn.net/2009/07/installing-ruby-191-rails-232-and.html>
A note on how to install the devkit into it might be good [or you
could link to somewhere that does, like
http://programming-gone-awry.blogspot.com/2009/05/ruby-19-one-click-installer.html
Cheers!
=r

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 10:49 AM, Roger Pack<rogerdpack at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> I decided to upgrade to PostgreSQL 8.4 last night and I went ahead and
>> tracked the progress, took a bunch of screenshots and made a post
>> about it here:
>>
>>
<http://blog.smajn.net/2009/07/installing-ruby-191-rails-232-and.html>
>
> A note on how to install the devkit into it might be good [or you
> could link to somewhere that does, like
>
http://programming-gone-awry.blogspot.com/2009/05/ruby-19-one-click-installer.html
Oops, I had that step in my notes and forgot to include it in the
post, fixed. I also added a link to the tutorials on Github.



-- 
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

I saw the following note in your tutorial:

Copy ?C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\libeay32.dll? to ?C:\Ruby19\bin? if
you encounter an error when Rails attempts to connect to your database.

Did you get an error using the libeay32.dll that the installer puts in
C:\Ruby19\bin by default?  Did you have to overwrite it with the one from
PostgreSQL to get things to work?

> I also added a link to the tutorials on Github.
I assume you''d be fine with a link from our Github tutorial page to
your post? :)

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Jon<jon.forums at gmail.com>
wrote:
> I saw the following note in your tutorial:
>
> Copy ?C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\libeay32.dll? to ?C:\Ruby19\bin?
if you encounter an error when Rails attempts to connect to your database.
>
> Did you get an error using the libeay32.dll that the installer puts in
C:\Ruby19\bin by default? ?Did you have to overwrite it with the one from
PostgreSQL to get things to work?
I didn''t have any issues with the libeay32.dll when I was using
PostgreSQL 8.3, but after upgrading to 8.4, I was getting an error
when connecting to PostgreSQL. Copying the dll from the PostgreSQL
distribution solve the problem and everything seems to be working
fine. My Rails app passed all 2200 tests.
>> I also added a link to the tutorials on Github.
>
> I assume you''d be fine with a link from our Github tutorial page
to your post? :)
Thank you for this.

-- 
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Jon<jon.forums at gmail.com>
wrote:
>
> I assume you''d be fine with a link from our Github tutorial page
to your post? :)
Yes that would be fine, thank you.

-- 
Find me - http://www.smajn.net/social

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 9:26 PM, Matt H<matt at smajn.net>
wrote:
> On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 12:29 PM, Jon<jon.forums at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I saw the following note in your tutorial:
>>
>> Copy ?C:\Program Files\PostgreSQL\8.4\bin\libeay32.dll? to
?C:\Ruby19\bin? if you encounter an error when Rails attempts to connect to your
database.
>>
>> Did you get an error using the libeay32.dll that the installer puts in
C:\Ruby19\bin by default? ?Did you have to overwrite it with the one from
PostgreSQL to get things to work?
>
> I didn''t have any issues with the libeay32.dll when I was using
> PostgreSQL 8.3, but after upgrading to 8.4, I was getting an error
> when connecting to PostgreSQL. Copying the dll from the PostgreSQL
> distribution solve the problem and everything seems to be working
> fine. My Rails app passed all 2200 tests.
>
Here, here! I know why that is happening!

Ruby has been built and linked against OpenSSL:

http://github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/blob/master/config/ruby_installer.rb#L167-175

The problem is that PostgreSQL uses a newer version, and the ABI
(binary compatibility) of the two versions is different, thus failing
with non-exported symbols and other stuff.

We use a older binary version, and PostgreSQL uses a new one built
from source by them (AFAIK).

I''ve played on "proper-openssl" branch to generate a static
version of
the library instead, so will no longer be a DLL conflict.

This has been discussed previously on this list between me and Lars Christensen.

Maybe that can be resurrected and integrated before next version of
the installer (which I''m going to blog about it soon).

-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

On Thu, Jul 9, 2009 at 1:12 PM, Roger Pack<rogerdpack at gmail.com>
wrote:
>> That said, maybe this iea is overkill and there''s no need to
lock down the Current version of the page.
>
> Yeah I''d say lock it down only if and after there are problems
[like
> spam or what not] :)
Yes, I would rather keep it open and only lock it down if we start
seeing lot of spam coming in.

-- 
Luis Lavena
AREA 17
-
Perfection in design is achieved not when there is nothing more to add,
but rather when there is nothing more to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exup?ry

> >> That said, maybe this iea is overkill and there''s no need
to lock down the Current version of the page.
> >
> > Yeah I''d say lock it down only if and after there are
problems [like
> > spam or what not] :)
> 
> Yes, I would rather keep it open and only lock it down if we start
> seeing lot of spam coming in.
luckily, there''s currently not an easy way to be this heavy-handed :)

http://groups.google.com/group/github/browse_thread/thread/cb03c8056c20d58d