Interesting ruby bootstrap experience on Windows

Ruby
1

I figured I’d try running the tests that Ron J. is running, to see
what happens on my Windows XP machine.

I realized that I haven’t actually used my win32 install in a while; it
was
still on 1.8.4 and rubygems couldn’t even self-update from 0.9.0. So I
just blew it away and redownloaded.

I’ve made a huge mistake.

Problem #1: There are (or were?) a lot of mirrors for Ruby downloads,
but
they seem to be gone as of the (otherwise really pretty) ruby-lang.org
redesign. So I had to downloaded it from the main site - and, judging
by
the download speed, that hurt the site even more.

Problem #2: I remembered reading here that the one-click installer was
outdated, so I figured I’d just download the base install and build it
up
myself.

(I’ve made a huge mistake.)

Problem #3: Rubygems needs zlib. Ruby-lang.org used to have that for
download, but it’s not there anymore. Downloaded it from zlib.net, but
there’s no zlib.dll in there; just zlibwapi.dll now. I couldn’t find
any
mention of that on Google, but I did find people saying they had
downloaded
the old DLL and put it in c:\ruby\bin (not lib!), so after some error
and
error, I renamed zlibwapi.dll to zlib.dll, and put it in c:\ruby\bin.

Problem #4: ruby setup.rb now gets past zlib, but crashes with a
segfault!
It’s at this point that I realize that the Ruby Windows binary on
rubylang-org is also out of date; it doesn’t list the patchlevel, but
it’s
dated 2007-03-13, which I think was the initial 1.8.6 release. OK, so
maybe there’s a bug that the current zlib or gems hits.

So, bunch more Googling, no mentions on comp.lang.ruby, but I eventually
stumble across www.garbagecollect.jp/ruby, which has mswin32 builds
available. More slow download across transatlantic links, more
unzipping,
and:

Problem #5: same crash.

Back to the zlib page. Ah hah… I had searched the page for “Windows”,
but the version of the DLL I apparently want is NOT the one called “zlib
for Windows 9x/NT/2000/XP/2003 (DLL version, plus related utilities)”.
It’s “zlib compiled DLL, version 1.2.3, zipfile format”. I see my
error.

I replace the zlibwapi.dll-named-zlib.dll with zlib1.dll-named-zlib.dll,
and now, all is well.

So… since Ruby’s a community effort, what can I do to help solve
problems
1-5, other than posting this for Google to index?

2

On Nov 18, 9:45 pm, Jay L. [email protected] wrote:

they seem to be gone as of the (otherwise really pretty) ruby-lang.org
redesign. So I had to downloaded it from the main site - and, judging by
the download speed, that hurt the site even more.

Yes, the one-point of code download is problematic. you can also
download the win32 builds from GarbageCollect [1].

Problem #2: I remembered reading here that the one-click installer was
outdated, so I figured I’d just download the base install and build it up
myself.

Not true, you should have done a google search before:

One-Click installer, 1.8.6-26 Release Candidate 2 (2007-10-29) – not
so old:

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

(I’ve made a huge mistake.)

Problem #3: Rubygems needs zlib. Ruby-lang.org used to have that for
download, but it’s not there anymore. Downloaded it from zlib.net, but
there’s no zlib.dll in there; just zlibwapi.dll now. I couldn’t find any
mention of that on Google, but I did find people saying they had downloaded
the old DLL and put it in c:\ruby\bin (not lib!), so after some error and
error, I renamed zlibwapi.dll to zlib.dll, and put it in c:\ruby\bin.

You should have to search better for this: ruby-mswin32 will bring you
better search results. also checking the source code for One-Click
ruby installer will be a good start, since it downloads the files
needed to build itself.

So… since Ruby’s a community effort, what can I do to help solve problems
1-5, other than posting this for Google to index?

One-Click installer maybe? or maybe you can do it yourself with mingw?
Anyway the problems you list require you some compilation, since ruby-
zlib extension that fix the whole zlib problems need a compiler.

We all know the state of Ruby on Windows is problematic, and I hope we
can all contribute to fix it. Please try One-Click installer and let
us know if you need anything :slight_smile:

[1] Index of /ruby/mswin32/en

Luis L.

3

On Sun, 18 Nov 2007 17:22:15 -0800 (PST), Luis L. wrote:

http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=167
I saw that, but I think I was fooled by the 1.8.6-26 moniker, which (of
course!) must be older than p111…

I can understand why you can’t just use the Ruby version (the OCI
includes
things other than just Ruby), but in that case, it would probably better
to
pick an entirely different version number that can’t be confused. This
is
release 26, so I’d suggest just calling it that - One Click Installer
Release 26. Or, well, anything BUT 1.8.6-26.

So… since Ruby’s a community effort, what can I do to help solve problems
1-5, other than posting this for Google to index?

One-Click installer maybe? or maybe you can do it yourself with mingw?
Anyway the problems you list require you some compilation, since ruby-
zlib extension that fix the whole zlib problems need a compiler.

Well, but I ended up solving it without having to compile anything; I
just
needed to figure out what pieces I needed and where I could find them.

What can I do to:

  1. Help update the ruby-lang site to show the mirrors again,
  2. Ditto to get the current Ruby binary up there, or at least linked up
    there,
  3. Ditto for zlib