Currently if you install any of the win32-* gems then it will work only with Ruby 1.8.x due to the precompiled binary
for that version. Why not create a pre-compiled versions for 1.9.x too and package them as a so called fat-binary gems?

This would make all those gems (probably) work with 1.9 Ruby too. Currently many gems cannot be used in 1.9 because
they're using win32-* gems as a dependency.

Date: 2011-01-10 16:14
Sender: Jarmo Pertman

That would be also great, although would need additional 
manual work to be done each time a new version of gem is going 
to be released.

That's where rake compiler could help i suppose.

Date: 2011-01-10 15:11
Sender: Daniel Berger

I guess I'll just install the 1.9.x installer for Windows, and
start shipping two binaries for win32-api. The api.rb file will
just require the appropriate binary based on your Ruby version.

Date: 2011-01-09 16:44
Sender: Jarmo Pertman

Luis, that would be great if you'd be able to help out to make 
win32 gems work under 1.9 too. As stated in my original 
request then they're playing quite big part of many other gems 
and are affecting Windows Ruby users experience negatively on 
Ruby 1.9.

Date: 2011-01-09 16:35
Sender: Luis Lavena

Hello,

Me chiming in.

To be able to create the fat-binary gems you need Linux, as currently
rake-compiler, the only project able to generate these automatically,
only support that functionality on non-Windows platforms.

It is in the Roadmap, but no ETA.

So, either the fat-binary gems need to be created manually or
on a non-Windows platform that support rake-compiler.

Daniel, feel free to contact me at RubyInstaller list to discuss
this.