[Win32utils-devel] win32utils with ruby installer

Charley Baker
Wed, 30 Dec 2009 20:01:10 -0000

Does anyone else care to weigh in? Responses inline.

Charley Baker
Lead Developer, Watir, http://watir.com


On Tue, Dec 29, 2009 at 4:09 PM, James Tucker <jftucker at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On 29 Dec 2009, at 18:58, Charley Baker wrote:
>
> Hi all,
>
>   I''ve been spending a little time delving into the latest Ruby
installer
> and win32utils, several of which are needed by the  project I''m
working on -
> Watir. We have requirements for some of the process libs which need the
base
> apis, etc. It appears currently that we need to do one of two things -
> either require the platform (mswin32) or install the devkit to successfully
> install and use Watir gems in the current Ruby installer setup. For
> development that''s fine, but that''s also the current case
for the enduser.
>
>  For this project are you planning on releasing mingw gems or fat binaries,
> I''m trying to gauge what the impact to our users will be. Like I
say, I''ve
> just started looking at this and would be happy to help with anything
that''s
> needed, so my questions may be a bit naive as I dive into this.
>
>
> There are some big issues here generally. Any library that uses SEH cannot
> be compiled with gcc (read: won''t compile under the new ruby
installer
> builds). AFAIK this directly affects win32-api, and iirc, win32-process,
> possibly win32-service too.
>


Don''t know what SEH means. I''m sure I''m missing an
obvious TLA :P, but I
don''t understand that.

>
> You can install the mswin32-60 builds of these, via:
>
> gem install --platform=x86-mswin32-60 win32-api
>
> Obviously this is somewhat of a hacky solution, but one we can''t
really
> avoid.
>
> I realize that, and mentioned as much. It''s kind of a crummy step
to
involve less technically savvy users, who simply want to install a gem that
works regardless. Is this the ideal plan when the new ruby installer rolls
out?


> As there are no plans globally to make gcc build SEH, and the hacky
> solutions don''t tend to work correctly, I would advise that these
projects
> take the following approach:
>
> 1. Build all libs that can be built for mingw, under mingw, using the
> devkit.
> 2. Libs that require an MS compiler for SEH, should be built with those,
> and binary gems should be released for the mingw platform, using these
> builds (as this is ABI compatible, and produces valid code).
> 3. Where possible, wrap up the above processes via rake-compiler.
>


Which projects are you referring to when you say "these projects"?
I''m just
looking at dependencies, and win32utils is a big one. It''s not up to me
to
recompile all of our dependent libs. Still confused, is there a short,
medium and long term answer?



> I am sure that there are others that might want to weigh in on this, Luis
> in particular, but this is the only valid option I know of at this time.
>
>
>  This also seems to be cross cutting between this project and then the
> rubyinstaller in general which should cause a bit of chaos which
I''ll also
> try to help out with.
>
> -Charley
> Lead Developer - Watir
>
>
>
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