DEV_MEM.dump_to(:blog)

I mentioned in previous post that I was working in a updated version of win32console.

So, just pushed to Gemcutter the prerelease version (_beta1_) so you guys can test with your current Cucumber/RSpec scenarios.

How to install prerelease versions?

All the RubyGems 1.3.x series sport the feature to prerelease gem installations. I recommend update to RubyGems 1.3.5 first in case you haven’t already, and proceed to install the gem:

gem install win32console --prerelease

The process will install version 1.3.0.beta1, which will be automatically available to any require done by Cucumber or RSpec.

What changed on this release?

As I mentioned before, there are a couple of changes required to support 1.9. On this release, I got rid of hardcoded translation tables used to convert codepages from input/output consoles.

How this affects me?

It will only affect you if you use accented characters in the output. If you do, then you should verify that your console codepage supports them. There is more information in the Cucumber wiki troubleshooting page

Now that text is sent transparently to the output, you have the control to feed the stream with different encodings and ensuring the output matches the console codepage.

A working example of this is located here

Please test it out so a formal 1.3.0 release can be done the upcoming days.

Cheers!

An hour ago I released version 0.7.0 of rake-compiler. See the announcement at RubyInstaller mailing list (CC to Ruby-Talk too, just in case)

JRuby

This new version includes an amazing contribution by Alex Coles that allow compilation and packaging of JRuby extensions and gems!

Yes, it is now possible, under JRuby, to compile JRuby gems that bundle jar files with the extensions.

Even more, with proper tools and a valid JRuby installation, you can even compile extensions from your current 1.8 or 1.9 MRI installation!

Please take a look in the README.rdoc file for more details

Rubinius?

I couldn’t test it myself, but seems that rake-compiler got bundled in latest RC1 of Rubinius. See it for yourself here

Thanks to Rubinius support for Ruby C API and huge reverse engineered mkmf, rake-compiler should work for most of the extensions. Will check that statement later.

So, resistance is futile… the next implementations to be assimilated are MacRuby and MagLev, wanna help me out on that?

What’s next?

At the time I started with rake-compiler, none of the cool tools like Pik or rvm existed.

Because of that, the only way possible to generate fat binaries (mentioned before here) was cross-compiling.

Now that is easy to switch Ruby versions and implementations, it will be possible to implement changes to generate native fat-binaries on any platform.

This functionality is planned, but not ETA yet. Want to help? Fork the project on GitHub and start right now!

For the ones that cares: I’m still alive.

I have so cool news to everybody:

MySQL/Ruby support

As I announced 2 months ago, new releases of MySQL gem are going to be build from my repository at GitHub

Please note: only report bugs related to the gem itself, more likely the binary issues. Other type of bugs will be rejected, since this gem is a wrapper around MySQL/Ruby code from Tomita Mashahiro (tmtm)

SQLite3/Ruby bindings

I took the role of maintainer of SQLite3/Ruby project, but I really lack the skills to dig into all the inner details of it.

So, I’m opening the door to anyone with new features, enhancements or bug fixes to fork my clone of the project (here), do your changes and send a pull request.

Both RubyForge Tracker and GitHub pull requests will be honored.

Pure-Ruby Readline (rb-readline)

Released version 0.2.0 a couple of weeks ago, but still is far from perfect.

We are still missing IO redirect and be able to run test_readline.rb test directly.

Roger Pack worked on that, but he also needs some help

Please, fork the project, do your changes and send your pull requests!

Windows Console (win32console) new release soon.

A few patches to improve 1.9 compatibility are under way.

rake-compiler get more audience!

That’s right folks!, rake-compiler now is being used to drive the compile and release process of native gems for DataMapper, FFI and even Thin !

Not too bad for 10 months old tool, ah?

Thanks to all the developers involved in these projects for caring about their products and adding the compatibility for Windows.

More projects listed here … Keep them coming!

Ruby Installer for Windows

Preview and DevKit releases has been moved to RubyForge

While our preview concept is quite stable, we are working on getting it better

Got my certificates to deliver signed installers, how cool is that?

Still alive an kicking

If you think I’m quiet, please join us at RubyInstaller Google Group, will find out that I talk more there than here

Well, after some time and a bunch of helpful contributions, here comes an updated version of rb-readline.

This version is mainly a bug fixing release:

• Accept ‘cygwin’ as valid terminal [rogerdpack]
• Accept ‘dumb’ as valid terminal. Closes GH-7
• Fix crash when performing reverse look search. Closes GH-6

Install instructions

1. Download rb-readline-0.2.0.zip from GitHub downloads
2. Extract to a folder and open a command prompt there (or cd into it)
3. Execute ruby setup.rb

That should update the installed rb-readline. Just to verify, execute the following in the command prompt:

ruby -rreadline -e "puts Readline::RB_READLINE_VERSION"

The output should say 0.2.0

More to come

Stay tuned for upcoming announcements, we are cooking RC for RubyInstaller! And at the same time, updated website, more documentation at the Wiki and of course, tutorials full of success!

Please join us at RubyInstaller Google Group and share your questions or issues!