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 >>> >>