I''m requesting that the upcoming DevKit gem be able to be optionally "pre-installed" from the installer at the same time one installs the base Ruby install. Given that DevKit is such an important part of Win32-based Ruby environments that do not already have a build environment, I feel this option is a more user friendly alternative than requiring a new user who wants to be able to have gems build native extension perform the following: 1) Download OCI 2) Run the installer 3) Open a command prompt 4) Type "gem install devkit" While I don''t think the OCI should be burdened with too many pre-installed gems, I also think that the DevKit gem is such a critical component of a working Win32 Ruby system that it should be treated more of as a "Super Gem" and allowed to be optionally preinstalled. I also like the idea that DevKit is a gem so that if and when it''s time to move to GCC-4.4.0 from MinGW, the upgrade should (hopefully) be easy. Thanks for considering the proposal. Jon
Luis Lavena
2009-Jun-30 17:10 UTC
[Rubyinstaller-devel] Optional DevKit gem install request
On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 10:31 AM, Jon<jon.forums at gmail.com> wrote:> I''m requesting that the upcoming DevKit gem be able to be optionally "pre-installed" from the installer at the same time one installs the base Ruby install. > > Given that DevKit is such an important part of Win32-based Ruby environments that do not already have a build environment, I feel this option is a more user friendly alternative than requiring a new user who wants to be able to have gems build native extension perform the following: > > 1) Download OCI > 2) Run the installer > 3) Open a command prompt > 4) Type "gem install devkit" > > While I don''t think the OCI should be burdened with too many pre-installed gems, I also think that the DevKit gem is such a critical component of a working Win32 Ruby system that it should be treated more of as a "Super Gem" and allowed to be optionally preinstalled. > > I also like the idea that DevKit is a gem so that if and when it''s time to move to GCC-4.4.0 from MinGW, the upgrade should (hopefully) be easy. > > Thanks for considering the proposal. >Thank you Jon for your write up. I need to think a little bit more on this, since ideally DevKit gem and the installation of the components should be shared across versions of ruby. Will keep you posted. -- 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
> Thank you Jon for your write up. I need to think a little bit more on > this, since ideally DevKit gem and the installation of the components > should be shared across versions of ruby.I''m wondering if the installer and the gem might be built to behave similar to how RubyGems behaves? Specifically, the current Ruby binaries come preinstalled with RubyGems 1.3.1 and then one can do "gem update --system" to update to 1.3.4. Both versions appear to be installed in Ruby, but the latest RubyGems wins out over the preinstalled RubyGems. I haven''t looked into it and I''m a bit new to Ruby, but is there a search ordering of $: that we could use to our advantage? In 1.9 doesn''t the "gems" directory override the "site-ruby" directory which override the "vendor-ruby"? Maybe the DevKit optionally installed from OCI can be placed in "site-ruby" and any updates would get placed in "gems". Maybe this isn''t how things work, but just a thought...