Building Ruby by newbi on Win32

Ruby
1

Hi, All,

My first post here:) I am trying something I have been doing with Lua
for years - dragging Ruby source files into an empty VS project and
trying to build it. That’s all on Win32 XP with MSVS. It doesn’t
compile! Missing config.h, which I can’t find anywhere in ruby source
except for VMS, not for Win32, some constants defined in parse.c are
used in lex.c and so they don’t compile either. Any ideas as I can
succeed at what I am doing? I hope I am not trying to do something
people have never expected anyone to do:)
I am still browsing through the web site in search of any info as to
what might be going on, but will appreciate ideas and pointers here as
well.

Thanks

2

dingo wrote:

Hi, All,

My first post here:) I am trying something I have been doing with Lua
for years - dragging Ruby source files into an empty VS project and
trying to build it. That’s all on Win32 XP with MSVS. It doesn’t
compile! Missing config.h, which I can’t find anywhere in ruby source
except for VMS, not for Win32, some constants defined in parse.c are
used in lex.c and so they don’t compile either. Any ideas as I can
succeed at what I am doing? I hope I am not trying to do something
people have never expected anyone to do:)

config.h is, confusingly enough, a header file with configuration.
Machine and user-specific configuration. Usually a configuration script,
confusingly called “configure”, generates this header file, and a
makefile you can use to build the program. This essential is usually
described in a file someone confusingly named INSTALL or README,
sneakily hidden in the main directory of the source archive.

Welcome to the POSIX build process. Lua is an exception rather than a
rule in that you can build it that way due to being a very simple
language and environment. Whoever makes the one-click installer might eb
able to describe how to build Ruby using MSVS in more detail, I’d just
get MinGW and use a POSIX environment where the ./configure && make all
install incantation works.

David V.

3

Sorry, saw your note too late - not vary familiar with Google groups
yet.

Thanks anyhow. Yeah, I first did the configure thing, according to the
readme file [the instructions for this have one step missing BTW too]
and then noticed that it produced the needed config.h. Had to poke
around with a few other things here and there to finally have it built.

Also the POSIX build process produces executable that is about 40%
larger then my release build. Go figure:)

D.

4

Never mind, folks,
Built it:) A ton of warnings of all sorts, but nevertheless.

5

dingo wrote:

Also the POSIX build process produces executable that is about 40%
larger then my release build. Go figure:)

Compiling in support for extra features or creating unoptimized code by
default maybe? At least Curt H.’ builds and Linux ones create a
static executable that invokes the interpreter stored in ruby18.dll, so
there might be some size overhead appearing around those parts too.

I can’t really vouch for MinGW or whateer you used as far as code
compactness is concerned.

shrug

David V.