On Tue, 18 Feb 2003, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

> On Tuesday, February 18, 2003, 10:41:29 AM, Pierre wrote:
>
> > Hello,
>
> > i'm regularly using ruby on a win32 environment, and i'd like to know if
> > any of you has some general indications on how to build extensions in a
> > MINGW32 environment, so as to get mswin compatible binaries without the
> > cost of a Visual Studio Licence.
>
Maybe you already got a detailed answer but a very simple solution, that I
use myself, is:

1. Install cygwin, www.cygwin.com, and make sure you install gcc 3.2 and
mingw includes (check 'develop' subcategory during cygwin install and
make sure you check all packages with mingw in the name)

2. downloaded the source for your Ruby version of choice, unpack and go
in there

3. autoconf

4. ./configure --with-gcc='gcc -mno-cygwin' --enable-shared

5. make
   make test
   make install

6. dl, unpack and build your ruby extensions the normal way

Note that for ruby extensions that rely on external libs you have to
separately build and install the libs since the cygwin-installed ones
cannot be used with your mingw ruby. Thus you typically need to use the
"--with-xxx-dir=your/path/here" option when creating makefiles with
extconf.rb.

Hope this helps!

/Robert Feldt