# Where to get required/recommended dll's on win32 **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [July 21, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335 "2006-07-21T19:57:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 7:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/1 "2006-07-21T19:57:00Z")
Hi. I’m wanting to try out ruby 1.8.5 preview2 on microsoft windows. Does anyone know of a list of needed/recommended dll’s and other odds and sods needed? I thought of copying the dll’s from the ‘one click installer’ but maybe they are not fully compatible with latest ruby preview. In particular, I have hunted for pdcurses 2.8 dll but can’t find it. I’m happy to try my hand at compiling from source if anyone can point me in the right direction for a newbie. I’ve looked at mingw but it seems I need to download a whole bunch of packages. many thanks for any tips ---
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 8:25pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/2 "2006-07-21T20:25:31Z")
On 7/21/06, simonh [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > many thanks for any tips > That depends on what compiler you are using to build Ruby. If you are > using > VC++6 then you are in luck, and most extensions are readily available in > binary form. If you are using any other compiler then you will most > likely > have to build everything from source. See this thread for details on the issues: [http://www.nabble.com/One-Click-Installer%3A-MinGW--or-VC2005--tf1961178.html](http://www.nabble.com/One-Click-Installer%3A-MinGW--or-VC2005--tf1961178.html) Curt ---
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 10:35pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/3 "2006-07-21T22:35:53Z")
thanks for reply Curt. I’m not wanting to compile ruby at the moment, just the external dependencies such as readline, ssh, pdcurses etc. Have you managed to compile any of these (latest versions)? Also, would you be able to enlighten me as to how .so files work? in the lib/i386-mswin32 directory on windows there are a whole bunch of them: curses.so, readline.so, socket.so …etc Do these files link with dll’s on windows or can they operate on their own? I asked this question a while back but never really got an authoritive answer. I was under the impression that .so on \*nix was equivalent to .dll on windows. If this is the case then why would they be installed on windows? ---
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 10:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/4 "2006-07-21T22:53:53Z")
I would tell that these .so files on windows are just renamed ordinary .dlls. I don’t have windows right now here, so see for yourself (the file should start with MZ and there should be some [almost human-readable] info at the end) ---
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 11:00pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/5 "2006-07-21T23:00:02Z")
Jan S. wrote: > I would tell that these .so files on windows are just renamed ordinary > .dlls. I don’t have windows right now here, so see for yourself (the > file should start with MZ and there should be some [almost > human-readable] info at the end) Yes Jan, the files do start MZ and some of the content is human readable. win32ole and win32api are in there. So the question is: are .so and .dll interchangeable? Another question is what are the dll’s in ruby/bin directory for? ---
**Author:** ![simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/7ba0ec/32.png) [@simonh](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/simonh)\ **Post date:** [July 21, 2006, 11:32pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/where-to-get-required-recommended-dlls-on-win32/99335/6 "2006-07-21T23:32:25Z")
On 7/21/06, Simon H. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote: > .so and .dll interchangeable? Another question is what are the dll’s in > ruby/bin directory for? \*.so files are, in fact, DLLs. “so” is the extension that Ruby looks for when loading Ruby code that has been written in C. These DLLs live in the “lib” subdirectory tree. The DLLs that you see in the ruby\bin directory are usually external, non-Ruby, libraries that are called by the Ruby bindings for that lib, which are usually one or more \*.so files. Most of the libs used by the one-click installer are picked up in binary form (there’s only a couple that I build from source). Curt