On 7/18/06, Curt Hibbs <ml.chibbs / gmail.com> wrote:
> The One-Click Ruby Installer for Windows is at a cross-roads. The C++
> compiler situation on Windows has become a complete mess because of subtle
> incompatibilities and has, consequently, become a big headache for me and
> extension writers.
>
> I need to decide whether future versions of the One-Click Installer are
> built with MinGW or MS VC2005 Express (both compilers are free). My bias has
> been to go with VC2005 on the theory that the MS compiler will always be the
> most compatible with Windows, itself.
>
Having used MS C since before it became Visual I can certainly attest
to it being a strong compiler. However, over the past few years it
seems as if MS has gone out of its way to alienate long term users of
their programming products. And it's not just the incompatibilities
introduced in VS.NET - look at what's happened to VB, OLE and MFC.

People spent 10 years becoming expert in these technologies just to
see them thrown away.

My experience is that you cannot write code using an MS platform and
expect it to be even compilable 5 years later. This is one of the main
reasons why I have switched to Open Source wherever possible - I have
code I wrote 20 years ago written in K&R C that still compiles and
works but anything I wrote in the 90s is a complete write-off.

As for the toolchain - while it may seem alien to people who have only
ever programmed with MS products, it really isn't that hard to get
your head around. More and more people are developing in a mixed
environment - e.g. coding on Windows workstations and deploying on
Linux servers. To have one set of tools and commands to remember makes
a lot of sense.

As for MS products being more compatible with Windows - if you've ever
come across the problem of trying to compile across different versions
of MSCVRT*.DLL you'll find that hard to swallow.

Personally I'm not interested in the slightest in making Ruby more
friendly to Windows but I am interested in making Windows more
friendly to Ruby.

Nearly all the good stuff we enjoy in Ruby on Windows comes from its
*nix background - using MinGW makes it a heck of a lot easier to
compile all those libs.

I say go for MinGW - it will still be here in 5 years time and it
narrows the gap between the Windows and *nix development environments.

My 2p

Regards,
Sean