It's probably also possible to get these working within Cygwin.  Assuming the libraries you need to compile against are available in Cygwin, of course.

-Ross.

On Oct 1, 2013, at 4:28 PM, "Michael J. Giarlo" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

> Our Windows-based devs all do their Ruby work on Ubuntu and Fedora VMs,
> FWIW.
> 
> -Mike
> 
> 
> 
> On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 1:12 PM, Justin Coyne <[log in to unmask]>wrote:
> 
>> If you see something about C-extensions, it's because the library is not
>> written in pure Ruby, it is a wrapper around a library written in C.  Your
>> system may not have the C compiler or some of the libraries needed to
>> compile or link the extension.
>> 
>> Justin Coyne
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Oct 1, 2013 at 2:49 PM, Joshua Welker <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> 
>>> 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
>>> 
>>