On Monday 01 October 2001 07:51 pm, Phil Tomson wrote:

> As an example: You'll still have a 'system' command in the Windows
> version.  Currently, the underlying code for making 'system' work is
> written from a Unix perspective and we rely on cygwin to make the
> translations for us (correct?)  If we were to dump cygwin, then we'd need
> some underlying C code that (if you're building on Windows) would call
> 'CreateProcess' from the Win32 API instead.

Of course, there are few or no commands you could run portably with "system" 
anyway on both a stock (i.e. no Gnu tools, etc.) Windows system and a Unix 
system. So portability with respect to system might be limited to something 
limited like looking for programs on the %PATH% and/or output redirection, 
for which you'd call cmd.exe. And for Win9x users, you'd just document the 
problems with I/O redirection and command.com <g>.

There's the work that the Python and Perl have done for their Windows ports; 
perhaps some of that code could be leveraged.

> One solution would be to convince
> ActiveState to do a port of Ruby for Windows, but I'm not sure they feel
> that the incentives are there yet.  What would it take to convince
> them?

How about: "market demand"?

Dick is a shrewd businessman. Whatever his own feelings about various 
languages, if there's not a good-sized Windows market for Ruby, he's not 
going to commit his company's resources to something that isn't going to pay 
off.

-- 
Ned Konz
currently: Stanwood, WA
email:     ned / bike-nomad.com
homepage:  http://bike-nomad.com