In my previous post, I mentioned exciting changes coming to RubyInstaller
Over the past month some of these changes materialize and others are still in progress. Consider the following post an status update of the project.
RubyInstaller is been promoted in Ruby-Lang website.
Yes! finally RubyInstaller downloads are displayed first in Ruby’s download page
This marks an important step for the project and it’s goals of make it more easy to try out Ruby on Windows. One less pebble on our path.
Ruby 1.9.2-p0 release and GCC 4.5.0 been used
So 1.9.2-p0 went out, so was RubyInstaller package of it. It felt great release the newer packages just 2 days after the official source code release.
I must admit that it was only possible thanks to the hard work of all the contributors and the ones that prefer to remain anonymous.
Lots of buzz
Since I declared One-Click Installer dead and put the initial bricks for RubyInstaller back in 2007, lot of things happened.
Over the past years thanks to many developers, the project has gained visibility and with it, a bigger user base.
I found that with the diversity of the growing user base, it also increased and exposed issues in the way we work with the project and deal with either bugs, feature requests or even support.
It is hard to keep everybody pleased and is hard to teach people coming to Ruby for the first time how to deal with things they never needed in their dotNET or Java jobs.
It is even harder when the first thing they hear are negativity to their environment (yes, Windows ala windoze, windblows, etc)
So we decided to put all the collective knowledge in our Wiki, specially the Tutorials page. It is interesting to see how that particular page grew over the past 6 months.
Even more interesting and satisfying is see that not only individuals are paying attention to the project but even groups like Pragmatic Studio and their Ruby on Rails training program acknowledge Windows users and provide instructions for getting them started.
Still lot to do
Work on the DevKit installer still goes as we adjust minor details to improve the first time experience and the support for both RubyInstaller and possibly JRuby.
People has been asking to get the DevKit included in the same Ruby package because that will reduce the errors users get. Not everybody needs to compile things all the time.
I personally don’t believe that will fix the education and lack of documentation problem, it will just make the installers 12MB bigger.
We need your help
The project needs more people involved. There is not a huge technical barrier to get started, just the willingness to get things done.
Either you want to document things (tutorials and such) or help out others with issues. Anything you want to do will be appreciated.
More to come
I’m trying to improve the cross-compilation support of Ruby so Linux/OSX developers can provide compatible code for other Windows users. Lot to be done there.
Other exciting things are coming and will post in follow ups. Enough for today!
Great work. I admire your efforts and I try to advertise as much as I can. I wish I had the right skills to help more and I hope you keep on doing this great job.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Dr Nic, skim, Luis Lavena, rubyfrance, Igor Bozato and others. Igor Bozato said: RT @luislavena: What where and when of RubyInstaller: http://bit.ly/dxOu8W first article out, more to come. [...]
Luis, just came across your post (2009) re install of MYSQL (5.083) with Ruby. Am a little confused. Is this the version of MYSQL to use now? Does not seem to be available any longer on download page. Have you posted instructions/ guidance re later versions of MYSQL - and I have missed them on you blog?
[...] Lavenas last post on his Blog includes a request for people to help the project. The project needs more people [...]