14.6. The Windows One-Click InstallerFor users of Microsoft Windows, one of the greatest advances in Ruby in recent years is the so-called "one-click installer." The primary developer for this project (officially called Ruby Installer) is Curt Hibbs. This offers a very Windows-like installation process with a native look and feel. The installer is good because it works as Windows users would expect it to. It is graphical and follows a step-by-step, well-defined sequence. It is of course a pure binary distribution, making a compiler unnecessary. But these aren't its only attractions. The distribution that it gives you is more or less "batteries included." It includes not only the Ruby interpreter with all the core classes and all the standard libraries but also a number of extra libraries and applications. Many of these are unique to the win32 platforms. The installer includes these pieces (some of which are optional):
Versions of the installer for other platforms are planned but not yet usable. |