Newbie Mixed Bag

[doc]

Excuse this mixed bag but to me they all come under the heading "help me
get started!". I have a working Ruby installation on win98se and I spent
last week reading many of the Ruby intro's and the chm. This week is
"hands on" and I am using an MS Access db of mine as my focus (along with
an external program to update it). So here goes, from the general to
specific...

1) Is win32 good-enough for learning Ruby on? I have other machines (XP,
OSX) but the win98se machine is my workhorse (being a slim VAIO notebook
it lives on the kitchen table).

2) Are all the RAA files "source code" only? I have no c compiler and
would like to avoid one if poss. I have installed some "gems" but not all
RAA files are packaged as gems, correct? If I do need a c compiler can you
recommend one?

3) Taking Og as an example, where do I find the documentation? I have
tried RI but no matter what term I supply I get either "no info" or "file
not found". I can get most Ruby info from the chm but when it comes to
add-ons (any) I fail to find any documentation (I suspect I'm looking in
the wrong place).

4) Noting Q1, what's the best/easiest/quickest route to ODBC access?

5) Anyone know of a (free) way to convert an MS Access db to sqlite3?

6) I have installed gems for sqlite3 and Og but cannot find an example of
how to create an Og/sqlite3 connection. I am using the sample database
from www.pool-magic.net's db manager. Using...

db = Og:atabase.connect(
:database => 'sample.db3',
:adapter => 'sqlite3'
)

...I get "uninitialized constant Og:atabase (NameError)". I can do "p
Og.methods" so I know the module has loaded ok.

And a final oddball question: given MS's marketing power do you think Ruby
is likely to get much of a foothold in the corporate sector? I'll be
learning Ruby regardless but it would be great if I could get paid work at
some (distant) point in the future.

Thanks for any/all feedback.

 

[Austin Ziegler]

1) Is win32 good-enough for learning Ruby on? I have other machines (XP,
OSX) but the win98se machine is my workhorse (being a slim VAIO notebook
it lives on the kitchen table).

Yes, although I personally wouldn't do it on Win98. As I noted in a
different post, all of my Ruby development at this point is on
Windows.

2) Are all the RAA files "source code" only? I have no c compiler and
would like to avoid one if poss. I have installed some "gems" but not all
RAA files are packaged as gems, correct? If I do need a c compiler can yo= u
recommend one?

There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
in any case.

3) Taking Og as an example, where do I find the documentation? I have
tried RI but no matter what term I supply I get either "no info" or "file
not found". I can get most Ruby info from the chm but when it comes to
add-ons (any) I fail to find any documentation (I suspect I'm looking in
the wrong place).

You would need to generate the ri data for Og. If you've installed Og
as a gem, do the following:

C:\> gem_server

Browse to http;//127.0.0.1:3000/ (I *think*; the output of gem_server
will tell you the exact port) and you can read the Og documentation on
that.

4) Noting Q1, what's the best/easiest/quickest route to ODBC access?
DBI.

5) Anyone know of a (free) way to convert an MS Access db to sqlite3?

Nope.

-austin
--=20
Austin Ziegler * (e-mail address removed)
* Alternate: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Derek OConnell]

Thanks Austin, especially for the gem-server command as I had not realised
it's purpose. I'll try MS's free compiler for DBI, although I was hoping
there was a repository for win32 binaries.

 

[Gavin Kistner]

There are instructions available on RubyGarden to get a free version
of the Microsoft compiler. Note that MINGW/MSYS is not compatible with
the most recent build of the Windows Installer version of Ruby. Many
things that require compilation *will not* compile properly on Windows
in any case.

Specifically: http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?WindowsCompiler

And no, many projects on RAA are Ruby-only, I think, requiring no
compilation at all.
See also http://www.rubyforge.org for a sourceforge-like project
repository.

 

[Derek OConnell]

Thanks Gavin but the compiler+extras don't support w98se and most the
non-gem RAA files, eg, DBI, I have looked at so far appear to need
compiling. I'm not averse to installing a compiler but with any non-ms
compiler I usually spend too much time tracking down headers and macros,
and then trying to figure out compiler errors... hence decision to use
Ruby (but it's looking like a catch-22 situation). If anyone has
precompiled win32 versions of mods like DBI I would appreciate a copy.

 

[Austin Ziegler]

....though they might if you run Cygwin and do your Ruby development in
Cygwin. With Cygwin you can get all the usual Linux GNU tools on your
Windows box, including GCC, GNU Make, SQLite and so on, as well as the
Cygwin version of Ruby.
=20
(Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to
mention that.)
=20
Of course, developing under Cygwin isn't a good solution if you
ultimately want your program to be a native Windows application; but if
you just want to learn or want a Unix-like environment on your Windows
machine, it's perfectly adequate.

As long as you don't mind foregoing nice things like Win32OLE, the
Cygwin version of Ruby is acceptable. I personally find that
inadequate. Cygwin is, as always, a poor mesh with Windows.

-austin
--=20
Austin Ziegler * (e-mail address removed)
* Alternate: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Austin Ziegler]

(Austin hates Cygwin with a passion, so obviously it slipped his mind to
mention that.)

Let me clarify something here:

I don't hate Cygwin.

I can't stand it when people pretend that it's an acceptable
environment on which to base Windows solutions. Whether this is a
"replacement command-line shell" (it isn't; I tried using cygwin's
shell for a good long time) or a platform to base a program on, it
isn't. Cygwin is a crippled POSIX environment that grants you clean
and unified access to neither all the POSIX goodness nor the Win32
goodness that's out there (and, now that I've *finally* done real
Win32 development, there's quite a bit of that out there; there's
several things that are, IMO, done much better than in POSIXland).

Again, to be clear -- it's not Cygwin that I hate. I *use* Cygwin.
It's people who pretend that it's a good fit to Windows. It isn't, and
it likely will never be.

-austin
--=20
Austin Ziegler * (e-mail address removed)
* Alternate: (e-mail address removed)

 

[Jason Foreman]

=20
As long as you don't mind foregoing nice things like Win32OLE, the
Cygwin version of Ruby is acceptable. I personally find that
inadequate. Cygwin is, as always, a poor mesh with Windows.
=20

Win32OLE works in the Cygwin version of Ruby, at least for what I've
tried using it to do...


Jason