I am attempting to write my first small Ruby app, but I am running into
major problems just getting off the ground developing in Windows. I
downloaded the most recent Ruby 2.0 package from RubyInstaller. Then I
installed DevKit so I could use gems. After some fiddling, I was finally
able to install some gems.



Some.



For any given gem I try to install, there’s about a 25% chance that I get
this byzantine error:



ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

[…a whole bunch of gibberish about C headers and so forth…]



In particular, I am trying to install the Blather XMPP client. I am tempted
to just give up and develop on Linux, but I am wanting to deploy this
script to Windows machines and figure I might run into problems if I don’t
develop in Windows. I have Googled the heck out of this issue and can’t
find anything that is similar to my case (the solutions on the
RubyInstaller Github wiki did not work). Do any of you Ruby people know why
I might be having this error so frequently in my Windows environment?









Josh Welker

Information Technology Librarian

James C. Kirkpatrick Library

University of Central Missouri

Warrensburg, MO 64093

JCKL 2260

660.543.8022