[Rubygems-developers] Native Windows RubyGems Installer

[Chad Fowler]

On Mon, 15 Mar 2004, Curt Hibbs wrote:

# Hi guys -- I just joined the RubyGems project!
# 

Welcome, Curt!!

# I want to create a native windows installer for rubygems. I also want to
# embed rubygems support within the ruby system installed by the one-click
# ruby installer for windows (I recently became a developer on that project,
# as well).
# 

That's wonderful.  Including RubyGems with the pragprog installer would 
greatly add to the acceptance/mindshare level we'll need to make this a 
standard part of Ruby.

What I think would be the best way to do this would be to create Gems of 
all of the packages that are normally distributed with the pragprog 
installer, and either include them in the download or (perhaps both?) 
provide them for gem --remote-install access as part of a post-install 
step.  You could possibly provide a "fat" installer with all of the gems 
bundled in or a light when that allows users to select which libs they 
want to install.


Rich and I were chatting this morning on AIM about native installer 
integration.  It's something Matz asked for at RubyConf.  It seems like 
the number one advantage (on most platforms) would be that the native 
package manager could help manage external (non-Ruby dependencies).  For 
example, it doesn't make sense to install the MySQL database module unless 
you have the MySQL DLLs.  I know that the linux package managers deal with 
this kind of dependency generally.  Does MSI?

On another note, Shashank Date is working on creating gems for all of the 
win32utils stuff that he, Dan Berger, et al have been doing.  These would 
make a great addition to the pragprog installer.  (I guess "pragprog 
installer" isn't a good name anymore now that non-pragproggers are 
involved.)

Thanks,
Chad