On 9/30/07, Luis Lavena <luislavena / gmail.com> wrote:
> I remember the discussion was heated, but no final word on the
> platform that OCI will use for future releases. So far, still remains
> linked to VC6 ones.

This isn't really a core Ruby question. This should be asked on
ruby-talk or (if there is one) the One Click Installer mailing list.

> What is required to finally migrate Ruby builds on Windows to VC8?

A recompile of ANY library that an extension depends on, because of
rampant Microsoft incompatibilities. The problem is that any time you
have more than one application using more than one C run-time (e.g.,
MSVCRT.DLL and MSCRT80.DLL), you have different memory allocation
tables, different file handle tables, etc. Microsoft simply DOES NOT
CARE about this and won't provide any workarounds to make this clean
and easy.

It is not in the One-Click Installer's mandate to recompile OpenSSL
using VC8 instead of VC6. Or zlib. Or pdcurses. Or ...

VC8 is the best compiler available right now and the only choice for
64-bit Windows. Maybe we can talk to Intel about using the ICC if
they'll be compatible. But Microsoft never responded positively with
any way to work around this given that we don't control the library
chain end-to-end.

It's not a problem for most of Microsoft's customers like my
workplace, where we compile EVERYTHING we need from scratch (except,
of course, Windows) or can demand up-to-date libraries from our tool
vendors (or pay for them...). It is a problem for any open source
project, not just Ruby.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * halostatue / gmail.com * http://www.halostatue.ca/
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