# Which gem to install on win32?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-gem-to-install-on-win32/116707>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [October 8, 2007, 10:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-gem-to-install-on-win32/116707 "2007-10-08T22:26:04Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ESMark\_Ping](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/d26b3c/32.png) [@ESMark\_Ping](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ESMark_Ping)\
**Post date:** [October 8, 2007, 10:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-gem-to-install-on-win32/116707/1 "2007-10-08T22:26:04Z")

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Occasionally, when installing win32-specific gems, I get choices  
like the following (I’ll use win32-process as an example):

1. win32-process 0.5.3 (ruby)
2. win32-process 0.5.2 (ruby)
3. win32-process 0.5.1 (ruby)
4. win32-process 0.5.0 (mswin32)
5. Skip this gem
6. Cancel installation

So what does the (ruby) vs. (mswin32) tags mean? Of course this is  
for win32–it’s a win32 extension.

Should I install the latest gem, or the newest mswin32 one? Why is  
there even a choice of ruby vs. mswin32?

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![ESMark\_Ping](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/e/d26b3c/32.png) [@ESMark\_Ping](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/ESMark_Ping)\
**Post date:** [October 9, 2007, 2:05am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/which-gem-to-install-on-win32/116707/2 "2007-10-09T02:05:55Z")

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On Oct 8, 2:25 pm, removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid (E. Mark Ping) wrote:

> So what does the (ruby) vs. (mswin32) tags mean? Of course this is  
> for win32–it’s a win32 extension.

In this particular case you want #1. 🙂

It simply the way I happened to tag the gem when I first built them.  
The Win32Utils unofficial rule now is “ruby” either means it’s pure  
Ruby or ships with a prebuilt binary if it’s a C extension, while  
“mswin32” means you build from source. It wasn’t always this way, so  
every once in a while you’ll see some inconsistency (#4) in this case.  
I think we’ll have a better way of tagging these in Rubygems 0.9.5.

Anyway, as a general rule, you want the latest and greatest.

What I would really like is a hook in RubyForge itself that removes  
the gem from the index if I mark a given release as ‘hidden’ so that  
the older gems don’t show up in the list of choices.

Regards,

Dan