Hi,

At Wed, 16 May 2007 17:33:32 +0900,
Ronald Fischer wrote in [ruby-talk:251776]:
> > Doesn't that readline.dll have the default value of INPUTRC?
> 
> Yes, but this is not the point. I don't claim that Ruby should not
> use readline.dll at all (it is very useful indeed and I have described
> an alternative solution, which would allow Ruby to use readline.dll
> without
> changing the system-wide settings). The problem is
> that the Windows installer for Ruby *silently* changes the system-wide
> value of this environment variable (or creates it, if it does not
> exist). In both cases, this can interfer badly with other software
> installed. 

I imagined if it might read any fallback file like
/etc/inputrc, e.g., $INSTDIR/etc/inputrc or something (assume
there is readline.dll underneath $INSTDIR/bin), without
particular environment variables.
Or, setting HOME as $HOMEDRIVE/$HOMEPATH or $USERPROFILE at
initialization of ruby, like as 1.9 does.

> I mentioned the problem with Cygwin because I happened to have stumbled
> over it, and also because it is not unlikely that other people will face
> the problem too (if you, for example, develop Ruby programs intended
> to run on various platforms, it is not unlikely that you have the Cygwin
> version of Ruby and the Windows version installed at the same system).
> 
> I could imagine, however, conflicts with other packages who happen
> to use readline.dll too. In general, I think that an application should
> never change an environment variable which it does not "own"
> exclusively,

Agreed.

-- 
Nobu Nakada