"Phil Tomson" <ptkwt / shell1.aracnet.com> wrote in message
news:IIMu7.1537$T%4.151439 / sjcpnn01.usenetserver.com...

> >But I think that most developers who don't have VC around also don't have
> >Windows around - at least as a development environment.
>
> Not true.  I can give you a real-life example:  I was working in a QA

Well I believe "most developers" covers it. I'll grant you that you can find
examples of the opposite. And you are quite right about the VC++ dll's. I'm
not saying VC and Windows dll's are always a pleseant environment - just
that it is the environment most commonly used.

> certain required DLLs, but if our test machines had VC++ those DLL's would

Beside the point, but FYI: We generally test on completely clean machines
using either Ghost to ghost images or VMWare to run virtual Windows that
also boots from an image. We never do QA test on machines configured for
development. This is btw. also a good way to test on different international
platforms as it is otherwise difficult to have that many installations
running.

> As I said earlier in the thread, what we really need to do right now is to

That's why we have this discussion.

Please see my other response in thread. Main concern being linker format and
difficulty of obtaining and installing cygwin/gcc. And the fact that Linux
is a good and cheap alternative to those who don't have access to VC++. Also
consider the Open Watcom alternative - if it is a such.

I really like the concept of a free compiler to support Ruby on Windows. But
if we are serious about supporting Windows, we must be realistic.

Mikkel