Thanks for the reply, Nakada.

From: <nobu.nokada / softhome.net>

> > 2. The choices of compiler are:
> >    - MSVC (commercial; Windows target)
> >    - Borland (free download; Windows target)
> >    - MingGW (free; Unix-like, but Windows target)
> >    - Cygwin (free Unix environment, Unix-like target)
>
> Note that mingw32 and mswin32(msvc) are runtime-compatible in
> 1.7 now.

That's good.  What does it mean?  And what does 1.7 have to do with it?

Using 'extconf' to generate a Makefile will still be incompatible if I use an
out-of-the-box Ruby compiles by MSVC but want to compile an extension with
mingw.

> >    b. Borland: difficult to compile Ruby, as
> >       - you can't run 'configure'
> >       - there's no pregenerated Makefile
>
> Experimental support in 1.7.

I just downloaded a "stable snapshot" and saw no difference from 1.6 as far as
Borland is concerned.

> > SUMMARY
> > -------
> >
> > Perhaps MinGW is the best bet for Ruby under Windows.  I'll give it another
try
> > and report to the group.
>
> Agree, but still it has some problems.

True.  I can't see a way to generate a Makefile for mingw either.  ... However,
I just looked at the www.mingw.org again and there is available an MSYS
package, including bash and sundry other things so that "configure" can be run.

> --
> Nobu Nakada

Gavin