> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Tom Clarke [mailto:tom / u2i.com] 
> <snip>
> > 
> > My thoughts are that for Windows we need a binary packaging 
> > system, perhaps integrated with the Windows versions of ruby. 
> > Once all the packages are compliant it should be 
> > straightforward to build all of the RAA-Packages as a batch.
> > 
> > Personally, I've not built any C-packages on Windows (except 
> > cygwin but that's a bit different). How is it done? Is it 
> > usually done through VC++ or some other way? Is it possible 
> > to build ./configure scripts to build things that don't 
> > depend on the cygwin dll?

Well, I know that djgpp works fine for me
on Windows. (This is the DeLorie version 
of gcc -- may not be latest -- not sure 
why it's called that, but the executable
is just gcc.exe as you'd expect).

Now, having said that, I have *not*
compiled Ruby on Windows (though I have
on other platforms, of course). Nor have
I tried to install a Ruby package that
needed a C compiler. I should try that.

At any rate, I've heard that this is 
theoretically possible with VC++ (and I 
think there are even build notes for it).
So I think it should be possible with a 
Windows gcc also (without Cygwin, which I
haven't used lately).

Hal