How do I get IRBRC running on Win32 for Ruby console?

Question

Can anyone suggest some troubleshooting approaches for getting IRBRC running under Win32? The rails console is an awesome tool and I'm attempting to extend it with more functionality.

For instance, I would like the what_method gem to load automatically. The gem is installed but it does not load:

C:\...\trunk>ruby script\console
Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.2)
>> 3.45.what? 3
NoMethodError: undefined method `what?' for 3.45:Float
        from (irb):1
>> require 'what_methods'
=> ["DummyOut", "WhatMethods"]
>> 3.34.what? 3
3.34.round_with_precision == 3
...
=> ["round_with_precision", "round", "prec_i", ... "round_without_precision"]
>>

My environment is setup as

C:\...\trunk>dir %HOME%
 Volume in drive C is OS
...
06/21/2009  10:29 AM    <DIR>          .
06/21/2009  09:28 AM               118 .irbrc
...

Environment variable path IRBRC = %HOME%\.irbrc

.irbrc file

require 'irb/completion'
require 'map_by_method'
require 'what_methods'
require 'pp'
IRB.conf[:AUTO_INDENT]=true

I've read the following references

http://railscasts.com/episodes/48-console-tricks

http://drnicwilliams.com/2006/10/12/my-irbrc-for-consoleirb/#irbrc_win32

http://groups.google.com/group/ruby-talk-google/browse_thread/thread/23fe3980a5a4816e

http://www.nabble.com/.irbrc-on-Windows-td23954309.html

Answer 1

If you're looking to have the 'what_methods' gem autoloaded in a Rails environment, you could just specify it via config.gem in your Rails config inside of RAILS_ROOT\config\environment.rb:

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
...
  config.gem "what_methods"
...
end

or for development only, just add it in your RAILS_ROOT\config\environments\development.rb:

config.gem "what_methods"

Answer 2

cd %HOMEPATH%

edit .irbrc

add stuff

Answer 3

Try setting your Environment Variable path for IRBRC to use "_irbrc" instead of ".irbrc" - yes even though the file in your home path is still actually called ".irbrc". For example, my IRBRC variable is "%HOMEPATH%_irbrc" and the file it is referring to is "C:\Users\Paul.irbrc".