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My interest in Ruby wanes a bit every time there is a new Ruby release, but no corresponding Windows installer on rubyinstaller.org

I really like the language and used to reach for it as a first instinct, but nowadays it almost lost its mindshare with me.

I understand that there are open bugs that are tricky, but I get the very serious impression that the core Ruby devs simply don't care about Windows at all (a bit like it used to be with git). Bad move, I think.

6 comments

You seem a little entitled. This may not be politically correct, but frankly, Ruby is nix style software, Windows support seems like its just a courtesy.

Perhaps I'm living in a linux-nerd bubble, but why would anyone even use ruby when targeting the Windows platform? Seems like .NET would be a more appropriate choice across the board (be it for web or Windows application development).

I can't imagine the type of pain involved in deploying Ruby code into production in a Windows environment, that just seems insane. This is all to say, maybe Ruby isn't the best choice for a Windows developer. If one simply enjoys the Windows experience in general, at the very least, if I were developing Ruby in Windows, I'd expect to use a *nix VM via SSH thru cygwin or something.

> but why would anyone even use ruby when targeting the Windows platform?

Ruby presents itself as fun-to-code-in programming language.

And it is very much so. That's why a lot people like using it.

Having to setup a whole new environment just to have their fav code tool at hand or having to boot a virtual machine each time just to use it it's much more inpractical, introduces overhead (e.g. sending files on which to work on with Ruby to the VM) and basically, for reasons I am sure you know, does not feel the same than having it installed locally.

As you said the fact that you are advocating that people should not be able to use Ruby on Windows just feels a bit of a *nix nerdy-bubble biased thought.

Use the right tool for the job. I adore Ruby, but I don't think its very practical to shoehorn it into a role where it's a less optimal solution compared to the other available options.

> Having to setup a whole new environment just to have their fav code tool at hand or having to boot a virtual machine each time just to use it it's much more inpractical

VMs are part of the modern developer landscape and are actually quite trivial to setup. Further, once your VM is built, it requires no further effort beyond the couple clicks it takes to boot up the VM and shell (especially because most developers avoid reboots).

> As you said the fact that you are advocating that people should not be able to use Ruby on Windows just feels a bit of a nix nerdy-bubble biased thought.*

I think it's pretty obvious that I'm not advocating programmers shouldn't be able to use Ruby on Windows, they should use whatever they want, but I think they should also temper their expectations with the reality that Ruby on Windows is a pretty small niche, especially for web development (likely the most common use-case for Ruby).

Ruby is a general purpose programming language. The fact that Rails made it popular for web dev is another thing. Also anyone who uses a language should be not tied to what the majority of coders do with that language or to the conception of what a "modern coder" is. A language is a tool, and I am happy when it is easily available to anyone under any condition to make of it whatever they want.

I'm not talking about what should be, I'm talking about what is. The reality is that Ruby on Windows is a relatively tiny fraction of the Ruby community; that doesn't mean nobody should use Ruby on Windows, it just means that you can't expect a first class experience compared to the environment where most Ruby code is tested, lives and thrives. This is the same reason why very few developers target .NET in the nix world, yes .NET can work on linux, but, despite the efforts of mono and Microsoft's upcoming OSS push, getting .NET to work correctly in a non-Windows environment is fraught with annoying problems and obscure compatibility edge-cases.

Except for educational purposes, if you're a programmer, I just don't see a reason to fight one's tools by deploying them in an environment they just aren't optimized for in practice.

I'm not sure you understand the definition of entitlement.

OP isn't saying the Ruby community OWES him a windows installer; instead, he is expressing disappointment that the Ruby community doesn't seem to care about its Windows users, which is why he is moving on to some other language--probably Python--that does appear to support the most popular, corporate desktop environment in the world.

>that does appear to support the most popular, corporate desktop environment in the world.

The key term there is desktop environment. Ruby is a scripting language most often used for webdev and devops, a section of the industry that is overwhelmingly dominated by server environments running some flavor of linux/unix. Barring very unusual circumstances, I'd have to question the sanity of any developer who deployed Ruby into production on Windows. I'm sure there is a scenario where Ruby on Windows makes sense, but in practice I just can't see why you wouldn't go with something like .NET instead.

Of course, if you just want to get something up and running so you can hack away, by all means, run Ruby on Windows, I just don't think you should expect the latest and greatest on a platform that doesn't see much practical use of the language.

Years ago, I developed large parts of PDF::Writer on Windows. I lived the pain that the GP lived, so I understand it.

The Ruby for Windows build is maintained by enthusiasts and is usually available within a day or two.

Nothing too alarming, since v2.1.4 is available: http://rubyinstaller.org/downloads/

Cool, that's new!

For ages there was only 2.0 available. Being a patch release behind is no big deal indeed.

Listen to the most recent Ruby Rogues podcast - they talk with the maintainer of RubyInstaller, and I came out of it thinking the Windows story wasn't as bad as I thought.

http://devchat.tv/ruby-rogues/181-rr-rubyinstaller-with-luis...

I'm stick to Ruby 1.9.3 on Windows, Ruby 2.1.4 can be installed, but some important Gems won't work, so I cannot install Sinatra for example.

So, I cannot stay like this, I like Ruby, but I cannot be at the mercy of their lack of attention for Windows, so, as soon Asp.Net MVC 6 is released I'm going to migrate my Sinatra web App to Asp MVC 6.

The only important gems I've had problems with on Windows with newer Rubies are native extensions that don't support 64-bit Windows correctly when using the x64 build of 2.1+.

A lot of other problems I've seen involve confusion over the right version of devkit for the right ruby build, which is made worse by the way devkits helpful install tools just identify all ruby installs and try to install debit by default into all of them rather than having knowledge about what ruby versions the debit version goes with and having default behavior that applies that knowledge.

Haven't developed on Windows in years but is there no package manager you can access via the command line or is an installer necessary?

Yes there's chocolatey which seems to be the most popular at the moment.

Latest version there is 2.1.3 at the time of comment:

http://chocolatey.org/packages/ruby

There is no current Windows build of Ruby at all.

I don't think they're talking about a released build, but rather building it yourself from source (http://madcoderspeak.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-to-compile-rub...) which is what all mac and linux users do. Even the ruby package managers we use (i.e. ruby-install, rvm, etc.) don't have pre-built binaries, they download tagged source files with checksums and run build commands.

And what has that do with the core developers? Is there a bug that prevents 2.1.5, but not 2.1.4 from running on Windows? The hostility against Windows is usually rather a community issue.

And they're not releasing pre-compiled versions for any other OS either. Build it yourself [1] or try to be patient until Luis Lavena uploads the Ruby Installer for 2.1.5.

[1] https://github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller (edit config/ruby_installer.rb to compile 2.1.5 and not 2.1.4)

Just use Vagrant. It's so much easier.