On 7/18/06, Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs / gmail.com> wrote:
> Thanks for taking the time to post such a detailed account. Now that you
> mention it, I have encountered the very same problem myself with OpenSSL. I
> actually gave up trying to solve the compile problem when I found a
> pre-built binary for OpenSSL.

I'm on vacation, so of necessity my post and details will be limited.

I have *never* had a problem compiling OpenSSL. (Well, almost. They
accepted some makefile patches that I gave them to shut up bogus
warnings/errors in VC2005. After that, though, I had no problems.)

MASM is now also available as a free download, so I expect that I
could do the assembly compile, too. I might have even already done it
with the netwide assembler.

OpenSSL and zlib are good libraries to compile, and I've never had a
problem with them. The extensions are a little harder, and a lot of
makefiles are written stupidly (e.g., they run install not $(INSTALL)
which should protect you against stupid things).

To the real question, though, we *should* be using the *native*
compiler for any given platform. I would *never* use gcc on HP-UX, for
example, if I wanted anything approaching performance or
compatibility.

If there is a problem in the toolkit that *Ruby* provides for
*extensions*, we need to find ways to make the toolkit for Ruby
extensions larger. Things like GSL, however, probably need to have
bugfixes and patches filed against the GSL project to make it work
well with non-Unix platforms. There's *never* a problem with producing
your own Makefile ... or Rakefile.

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