# Ruby Standard Environment **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [October 15, 2010, 8:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532 "2010-10-15T20:40:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![okkezSS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/o/85f322/32.png) [@okkezSS](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/okkezSS)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 8:40pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532/1 "2010-10-15T20:40:46Z")
I am running windows XP professional with Ruby 1.92. I have a Ruby project that requires mechanize, nokogiri, rest-open-uri. It fills in a web-page search form, walks the returned web-pages sequentially and extracts string data. Other than perhaps for additional HTML handling or string processing I do not see an immediate need or other Rubygems. But I would like to know what gems people have loaded for a typical install. Also there appear to be many versions (slightly different names) of some of the gems and it would take hours trying to determine which version is most suitable. Is there a recommended list of gems to install or at least specific to operating system (on XP in my case) I have these gems installed hpricot (0.8.2) probably no longer needed (nokogiri) mechanize (1.0.0) minitest (1.6.0) nokogiri (1.4.3.1 x86-mingw32) rake (0.8.7) rdoc (2.5.8) rdoc-data (2.5.3) rest-open-uri (1.0.0) scrapi (1.2.0) prob will not use scrubyt (0.4.06) prob will not use tidy (1.1.2) I am sure there are many gems I could benefit from if I knew what they were. What other gems would typically be installed and what packages are installed by other than a gem install (download windows binaries). One of the reasons I am asking is that a gem I wanted to install required libxml2. I Installed libxml-ruby (1.1.4 ruby x86-mswin32-60) and the install process determined that zlib was missing (suspect a few others as well) When I looked at the libxml2 make file it appeared to be for a ruby 1.8 install. I then did some digging around and found dll,lib and header files available pre-built. Rather than installing the gem and this appears to be the route for me to take (but how would I know the gem build was for 1.8? without looking at the make file or is this is fine for 1.92 as well) I am thinking of perhaps uninstalling and re-installing Ruby mostly to get a better directory structure. Should I perhaps be dropping back to Ruby 1.8 for better compatibility?. Thanks Don ---
**Author:** ![rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rustysam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532/2 "2010-10-15T22:39:51Z")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Am 15.10.2010 20:40, schrieb Don N.: > But I would like to know what gems people have loaded for a typical > install. I think which gems one has installed depends on which are needed. I just have very few gems I always install ontop of a new Ruby installation, the others come when they are needed. They usual way is to query [Rubygems.org](http://Rubygems.org)’s search function with a topic and pick one of the resulting gems. The few gems I usually install are these ones: - hanna: I really hate that standard Darkfish output. hanna looks much nicer (and I hope it will be updated sometime…) - RedCloth: I write many things in Textile and format the resulting HTML. - coderay: When I write about coding, I need a powerful syntax highlighter. - redcar: Programming editor - test-unit: Yeah, I’m still using it… - term-ansicolor: For colored console output (works on windows only in combination with win32-console) - wxruby-ruby19: For GUI development But as I’m developing many different things, the number of installed gems grows and currently I have 30 gems installed. The most ones are dependencies of other gems, though. > I am sure there are many gems I could benefit from if I knew what they > were. What other gems would typically be installed and what packages > are installed by other than a gem install (download windows binaries). Nearly every piece of Ruby library software is available as a gem. On Windows, you should install the RubyInstaller Devkit to get access to all of them. Beside gems, I only download a C extension’s external dependencies for Ruby. > One of the reasons I am asking is that a gem I wanted to install > required libxml2. I Installed libxml-ruby (1.1.4 ruby x86-mswin32-60) > and the install process determined that zlib was missing (suspect a few > others as well) When I looked at the libxml2 make file it appeared to > be for a ruby 1.8 install. zlib shouldn’t be missing. Where did you get your Ruby from? The standard RubyInstaller ( [http://rubyinstaller.org](http://rubyinstaller.org) ) ships with zlib precompiled for Windows. > I then did some digging around and found dll,lib and header files > available pre-built. Rather than installing the gem and this appears to > be the route for me to take (but how would I know the gem build was for > 1.8? without looking at the make file or is this is fine for 1.92 as > well) > I am thinking of perhaps uninstalling and re-installing Ruby mostly to > get a better directory structure. Should I perhaps be dropping back to > Ruby 1.8 for better compatibility?. Although I mainly work on my Ubuntu Linux system, 1.9.2-p0 works fine for me on Windows Vista Home Premium 32 bits. As I asked above: Where did you get your Ruby from? The mswin32-build is not the normal way to go on Windows anymore, switch to the mingw32 build from the RubyInstaller team. > Thanks Don Vale, Marvin -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - [http://enigmail.mozdev.org/](http://enigmail.mozdev.org/) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMuK9HAAoJEGrS0YjAWTKVyysH/RRfbUJNM/PG2fl5Y6s1BZ0r idfI3Yf+YYAu014r4MyQJ5GJpMaARJYZJtc1f9fieptbTZhd4SGU8xqkgV0unHPB mgZNtkKwbYgSJis4/Ba8l6HQi9BlZn4rbY1WtA0RJ/93VQGSbyzB2VEHoaI3vGJb aeMCmNRLIzjwJvmUdLnvUYl8sxzN6kSuPf66vQruYt0QOO9gcA7BG+1EgFAJxszj tS9/6c25/JjovB8ZmFQwbEP3pQhsu3HEIznExQ1SdRPSD38u/PtBfiBadfijwO4R WN47Sz+9QMcpxfOUn52cAgs5uLphAomZQxGPvES3roeIcVNTrIRkDXT9s/3uHmw= =VEem -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---
**Author:** ![rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rustysam)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2010, 10:54pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532/3 "2010-10-15T22:54:42Z")
I agree with Quintus - to run the standard implementation of Ruby on Windows painlessly, use RubyInstaller with the DevKit added. As far as standard gems go, I now use Bundler for every project - the Bundler gem facility builds a good minimal project structure, and the dependency management quickly becomes a time saver as the project grows. It plays well with Git branches, so you can even have different dependencies for different branches of your project. On 15 Oct 2010, at 20:45, Quintus wrote: > [Rubygems.org](http://Rubygems.org)’s search function with a topic and pick one of the > combination with win32-console) > Nearly every piece of Ruby library software is available as a gem. On > > idfI3Yf+YYAu014r4MyQJ5GJpMaARJYZJtc1f9fieptbTZhd4SGU8xqkgV0unHPB > mgZNtkKwbYgSJis4/Ba8l6HQi9BlZn4rbY1WtA0RJ/93VQGSbyzB2VEHoaI3vGJb > aeMCmNRLIzjwJvmUdLnvUYl8sxzN6kSuPf66vQruYt0QOO9gcA7BG+1EgFAJxszj > tS9/6c25/JjovB8ZmFQwbEP3pQhsu3HEIznExQ1SdRPSD38u/PtBfiBadfijwO4R > WN47Sz+9QMcpxfOUn52cAgs5uLphAomZQxGPvES3roeIcVNTrIRkDXT9s/3uHmw= > =VEem > -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- * * * Stuart E. removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rustysam)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 10:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532/4 "2010-10-16T10:13:17Z")
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Am 16.10.2010 00:43, schrieb Don N.: > I no longer know where I got my Ruby install from, just followed > recommendations I found on line. When I attempted to find out where my > download came from, I found i had ruby-1.9.2-p0-i386-mingw32 sitting on > my machine. Also found “rubyinstaller-1.9.2-p0.exe” which looks to be > same. So looks like this is what I was about to install when something > I found that changed my mind. > > If I uninstall, is the uninstaller provided with Ruby sufficient or are > there other areas (registry, etc) to be looked at before re-installing. I suppose you got your mswin32-Ruby from [ruby-lang.org](http://ruby-lang.org) as a simple ZIP file. Removing the mswin32-Ruby’s directory should be enough to uninstall it as no registry keys are set. If you want to uninstall a Ruby the RubyInstaller installed, there should be an uninstall option for it as for any other program. However, I don’t think the RubyInstaller sets any Registry keys, so just deleting the installation directory should be fairly safe. Vale, Marvin -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.10 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - [http://enigmail.mozdev.org/](http://enigmail.mozdev.org/) iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJMuV5XAAoJEGrS0YjAWTKVbhsH/igrTjHMhqyOxuH6a79Hs6k4 xzWm3R4TLKBLq6GWpLVjmh1kRLHUuF148OSgYmj35JSxJygIcQn7wfi3HrsU1yvJ w5wjm3exLafEYKG9jal+6QIUydZBjP8KjT0/eQ6D12XEsp/ox92wgYsgGV2CZHkw XPXurDqfWRHb0N3RUvh7evOwtr/+1I9NkbWmvkMIFMrZQwNTFwAoQUFGIQwydeCA 0ntLTNsJ9YYH8oB8RHx38LTM+ZWbBppcnRHqOjqWKz/eX2h8kIrzXi9jkfSuMtMJ Up3c8zxnbbSnb/R1hUYAQRywqeiU7UqZ3bcSrUI2S2q9WdYOM7rrsfhbL5H5Fjc= =a7iO -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ---
**Author:** ![rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/r/4da419/32.png) [@rustysam](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/rustysam)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2010, 12:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/ruby-standard-environment/197532/5 "2010-10-16T00:42:48Z")
I no longer know where I got my Ruby install from, just followed recommendations I found on line. When I attempted to find out where my download came from, I found i had ruby-1.9.2-p0-i386-mingw32 sitting on my machine. Also found “rubyinstaller-1.9.2-p0.exe” which looks to be same. So looks like this is what I was about to install when something I found that changed my mind. If I uninstall, is the uninstaller provided with Ruby sufficient or are there other areas (registry, etc) to be looked at before re-installing.