Geeeeeez.  I've got 512Mb on my machine, and FXRuby won't compile with 
optimization options; at one point, it was consumed 330Mb of RAM before 
"running out of memory"!  Doesn't this seem a bit... excessive?  What is it 
about FXRuby that is requiring so many resources?  I've noticed that I'm not 
the only person with this problem, but it took me a while to track it down.  
Perhaps the suggestion of turning off "-O2" to get it to build would be 
useful in the docs somewhere.

By the way, has anyone ever been able to compile it under gcc with 
optimization, and how much memory did it suck up to compile (out of 
curiosity)?

gcc version 2.96 20000731 (Red Hat Linux 7.0)
FXRuby-0.99.172
FOX Library Version 0.99.172

--- SER