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Benjamin Peterso #1 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote: ><... bits about i18n and text processing snipped ...> >I will take your word for it that these are >significant roadblocks for >you and others. I typically deal with English (ASCII) >text exclusively >and so it hasn't been an issue for me -- yet.
I accept that Ruby's linguistic limitations are not a problem for a majority of users. But then, people who might get text from any old country can't *be* users... Quote: >Just curious, what would be the significance
(benefit) of having an Quote: >ActiveState Windows distribution versus some other
Windows distribution? There is no particular magic virtue in the name 'ActiveState', but there were two things needed that ActiveState could have provided: Resources: The boost ActiveState gave to Perl was considerable -- a serious amount of resources were added to the Perl project, leaving Perl's core people free to work on the language secure in the knowledge that the Windows hordes would be able to use it all right out of the box. The Pragmatic Programmers have done a great job, but they have nothing like the resources to spend on this that ActiveState gave to Perl. Enough clout to make their distro the standard: Most people search for 'ruby windows binary' and come up with all sorts of horrible things. The PragProg distro *may* be the best Windows distro, (though ActiveScriptRuby is important), but it is only one of *four* links to win32 Ruby distros on the ruby-lang.org download page. It feels futile to try and add windows-specific functions when there are so many competing distros many of which will never incorporate any new functionality. With ActiveState Perl, though, it was possible to add lots of goodies, because you could pretty well assume the users would have them in their distro. Quote: >The most recent Ruby installer for Windows (from Andy Hunt) included >Ruby/DBI, DBD/ODBC, DBD/Postgres, DBD/MySQL and
DBD/Oracle. So it does. A thank you to Andy Hunt and a slap on the wrist to myself. Quote: >But for things that do depend on >modifications to the core it would be nice to have >some more concrete >plans to work with.
You accidentally pasted the words 'more concrete' into your mail :) You are right when you say that many of the features I mentioned are not critical for the majority of users (we'll never have threads and I can live with that). However, the problem I hoped to draw attention to was not the absence/desirability/necessity of particular features, so much as the need, if Ruby is to grow and spread any further, to move to a more open model of software development. x
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Mon, 13 Dec 2004 23:48:29 GMT |
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Dave Thoma #2 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote:
> Enough clout to make their distro the standard: Most people search > for 'ruby windows binary' and come up with all sorts of horrible > things. The PragProg distro *may* be the best Windows distro, > (though ActiveScriptRuby is important), but it is only one of *four* > links to win32 Ruby distros on the ruby-lang.org download page. It > feels futile to try and add windows-specific functions when there > are so many competing distros many of which will never incorporate > any new functionality. With ActiveState Perl, though, it was > possible to add lots of goodies, because you could pretty well > assume the users would have them in their distro.
Which raises a question. How can we open up the process so that the community can get involved in the generation of the windows distribution? If we moved it to (say) SourceForge would other folks be interested in helping out? Cheers Dave
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:25:27 GMT |
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Bob Calc #3 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Yes, I would gladly volunteer considerable effort to this end. I have considerable Windows System level programming that I'd like to contribute to, particularly, the multithreading issues noted elsewhere as a weakness in the distribution. -- Bob Calco Quote: -----Original Message-----
Thomas Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 12:22 PM To: ruby-talk ML Cc: Andy Hunt Subject: Re: help (ruby-talk ML)
> Enough clout to make their distro the standard: Most people search > for 'ruby windows binary' and come up with all sorts of horrible > things. The PragProg distro *may* be the best Windows distro, > (though ActiveScriptRuby is important), but it is only one of *four* > links to win32 Ruby distros on the ruby-lang.org download page. It > feels futile to try and add windows-specific functions when there > are so many competing distros many of which will never incorporate > any new functionality. With ActiveState Perl, though, it was > possible to add lots of goodies, because you could pretty well > assume the users would have them in their distro. Which raises a question. How can we open up the process so that the community can get involved in the generation of the windows distribution? If we moved it to (say) SourceForge would other folks be interested in helping out? Cheers Dave
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 00:51:37 GMT |
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Dave Thoma #4 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote:
> Yes, I would gladly volunteer considerable effort to this end. I > have considerable Windows System level programming that I'd like to > contribute to, particularly, the multithreading issues noted > elsewhere as a weakness in the distribution.
That's great. In fact, changes to the basic Ruby interpreter and runtime don't need a project on SF: all you have to do is check out the source code from ruby-lang and set to it. I'm sure that Matz will be happy to accept patches, and will likely make folks who produce good work committers in the tree. If you do do work n this area, I'd encourage you to update the rubicon tests accordingly: Chad Fowler (among others) spent some time getting the tests more stable under Windows, so we can now start using them. If there's a feature that's broken that isn't in the tests, write a test that fails, then fix the interpreter and watch the test pass. If there are tests that are currently not run on Windows because of compatibility problems, let's make them run. I'd love to see a couple of Window's efforts get started in earnest: one to beef up Windows support in the interpreter and its libraries, and the other to have the community work towards building a standard Windows distribution that we can all agree on. Pragmatic Programmers may not have the resources of ActiveState, but as a community we have considerably more. It just needs coordinating. Cheers (and thanks) Dave
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 01:02:06 GMT |
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Lyle Johnso #5 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote: > That's great. In fact, changes to the basic Ruby interpreter and > runtime don't need a project on SF: all you have to do is check out > the source code from ruby-lang and set to it. I'm sure that Matz will > be happy to accept patches, and will likely make folks who produce > good work committers in the tree.
At last year's RubyConf, in the sort-of "round-table" discussion at the end, someone asked a question along the lines: if Matz himself isn't especially interested in improving the Ruby core support for Windows, would he at least allow interested members of the Ruby community to make improvements to the core? The question was met with what was, at best, a "lukewarm" response, which I took at the time to mean he really didn't want anyone soiling Ruby with Windows-related code. But over the past year I've come to realize that it was probably just Matz being quiet and mysterious ;) I guess the question (which has come up before) is what really needs to be "fixed" in the Ruby core for Windows. I'm all for new and improved extension modules that make Ruby-on-Windows more powerful, but by definition those don't require modifications to the core. The only problem that immediately comes to mind is the "quirky" behavior of Ruby threads on Windows, and I'm not sure that anyone's nailed that one down conclusively. Quote: > I'd love to see a couple of Windows efforts get started in earnest: > one to beef up Windows support in the interpreter and its libraries, > and the other to have the community work towards building a standard > Windows distribution that we can all agree on. Pragmatic Programmers > may not have the resources of ActiveState, but as a community we have > considerably more. It just needs coordinating.
See previous question about what "beefing up" Windows support in the interpreter and its libraries entails. Or maybe we both have the same question ;) And I definitely agree about farming out more of the work on building a Windows distribution. I for one will be glad to "adopt" some of the popular extensions and make sure that Windows binaries are available. Seems like we just need a central repository for such things.
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:12:33 GMT |
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Dave Thoma #6 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote:
> I guess the question (which has come up before) is what really needs to be > "fixed" in the Ruby core for Windows. I'm all for new and improved extension > modules that make Ruby-on-Windows more powerful, but by definition those > don't require modifications to the core. The only problem that immediately > comes to mind is the "quirky" behavior of Ruby threads on Windows, and I'm > not sure that anyone's nailed that one down conclusively.
Threading is the big one. Then there's also the strange subprocess handling: last time I tried it, accessing $? after calling system() threw an exception, for example. Handling of built-in commands also used to be problematic. I also see problems with the networking code: webrick keeps crashing for me under windows. In general, Ruby under Windows is not as stable or as reliable as under Unix. If someone were to take charge, they could work on building the bug list. Quote: > > I'd love to see a couple of Windows efforts get started in earnest: > > one to beef up Windows support in the interpreter and its libraries, > > and the other to have the community work towards building a standard > > Windows distribution that we can all agree on. Pragmatic Programmers > > may not have the resources of ActiveState, but as a community we have > > considerably more. It just needs coordinating. > See previous question about what "beefing up" Windows support in the > interpreter and its libraries entails. Or maybe we both have the same > question ;) And I definitely agree about farming out more of the work on > building a Windows distribution. I for one will be glad to "adopt" some of > the popular extensions and make sure that Windows binaries are available. > Seems like we just need a central repository for such things.
Andy's building a metadata system which lets him build new releases declaratively. He's currently plagued by incompatibilities between all the different installation mechanisms and requirements that folks use. If we could get the windows distribution train rolling, perhaps we could also use it as a bully pulpit to bring some standardization here too. My ideal would be to have a community project to get Ruby support under Windows as solid as Perl's. That means fixing stuff in the interpreter and libraries (and, as importantly) showing a commitment to fixing stuff in the Windows environment. Second, I'd like to see the community come to consensus on a Windows distribution (possibly via a SF project to set up the distribution builder). Once that's there, it would be nice to have a system that could generate these distributions (say daily), so we no longer had to wait for Andy to get a spare evening to do it. Perhaps SF could do this for us too: I haven't investigated their build system. Cheers Dave
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:20:34 GMT |
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Curt Hibb #7 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote:
> Threading is the big one. Then there's also the strange subprocess > handling: last time I tried it, accessing $? after calling system() > threw an exception, for example. Handling of built-in commands also > used to be problematic.
I am going to try to figure out the threading problem, out of necessity -- as it is holding up the development of FreeRIDE. If anyone has already spent any time investigating this, I would appreciate any information that you could pass on to speed up my efforts. Curt
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:31:01 GMT |
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Morris, Chri #8 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote: > it would be nice to have a system that could generate these > distributions (say daily), so we no longer had to wait for Andy to get > a spare evening to do it.
I'd certainly be for anything like this and would be willing to contribute (time is, as always, another matter :) Chris
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 02:41:29 GMT |
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Yukihiro Matsumo #9 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Hi, In message "Re: help (ruby-talk ML)"
|At last year's RubyConf, in the sort-of "round-table" discussion at the end, |someone asked a question along the lines: if Matz himself isn't especially |interested in improving the Ruby core support for Windows, would he at least |allow interested members of the Ruby community to make improvements to the |core? The question was met with what was, at best, a "lukewarm" response, |which I took at the time to mean he really didn't want anyone soiling Ruby |with Windows-related code. But over the past year I've come to realize that |it was probably just Matz being quiet and mysterious ;) Was I? ;-) As you know, I myself is not interested in the Windows support, but I've already allowed Windows improvement, and even assigned a few guys for Windows support. All we need are bug reports, proposals, ideas, and especially patches. matz.
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:52:12 GMT |
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Serg Kore #10 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Hi Is there an accepted way of handling timed interval events? I'd like to process some code every 30 seconds. I can't seem to find any timer or interval classes in Ruby's library. Thanks for any hints or code snippets. S
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:10:26 GMT |
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Lyle Johnso #11 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote: > Hi > Is there an accepted way of handling timed interval events? I'd like to > process some code every 30 seconds. I can't seem to find any timer or > interval classes in Ruby's library.
I'll bet there's a better way, but what about creating a thread that sleeps thirty seconds in between doing its thing? th = Thread.new do loop do puts "I just did something, going back to sleep now!" sleep(5) end end HTH, Lyle
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:33:15 GMT |
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Lyle Johnso #12 / 27
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help (ruby-talk ML)
Quote: > Hi > Is there an accepted way of handling timed interval events? I'd like to > process some code every 30 seconds. I can't seem to find any timer or > interval classes in Ruby's library.
I'll bet there's a better way, but what about creating a thread that sleeps thirty seconds in between doing its thing? th = Thread.new do loop do puts "I just did something, going back to sleep now!" sleep(30) end end HTH, Lyle
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Tue, 14 Dec 2004 10:33:26 GMT |
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