I can't get the ruby development kit working for Windows XP

Question

So, I can't for the life of my get this working properly. My ultimate goal is to get the dbd-odbc gem installed and working, and from multiple things I've read, I need to install the ODBC binding for ruby alongside the dbd-odbc gem. Well, I can get the dbd-odbc gem installed just fine, but when it comes to trying to install the binding it tanks out on me like so:

Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing ruby-odbc-0.9998.gem:
        ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.`

c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb
checking for version.h... *** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more
details.  You may need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
        --with-opt-dir
        --without-opt-dir
        --with-opt-include
        --without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
        --with-opt-lib
        --without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
        --with-make-prog
        --srcdir=.
        --curdir
        --ruby=c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/bin/ruby
        --with-odbc-dir
        --without-odbc-dir
        --with-odbc-include
        --without-odbc-include=${odbc-dir}/include
        --with-odbc-lib
        --without-odbc-lib=${odbc-dir}/lib
c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:364:in 'try_do': The complier failed to generate an executable file. (RuntimeError)  
You have to install development tools first.  
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:433:in 'try_cpp'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:811:in 'block in have_header'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:670:in 'block in checking_for'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:276:in 'block (2 levels) in postpone'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:250:in 'open'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:276:in 'block in postpone'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:250:in 'open'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:272:in 'postpone'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:669:in 'checking_for'
        from c:/tools/ruby/ruby-1.9.1-p376/lib/ruby/1.9.1/mkmf.rb:810:in 'have_header'
        from extconf.rb:22:in ''

So...reading through it, it says I have to install the development tools first. Fine and dandy. I go here, and grab the dev kit. I wander here, and read through the instructions on how to install it. I install it.
On a side note - I've tried this with a one-click install of 1.9.1 from the ruby installer site. I've tried this with precompiled mswin-32 binaries of ruby, under 1.8.6, 1.8.7 and 1.9.1. None of them have worked.
I'll stick with the one-click installer since that's what all the instructions I've come across the web seem to be using. Fine. It says to edit my fstab file. I do. Here's my current setup:
My ruby installation is sitting in: C:\tools\ruby\ruby19 The devkit has been extracted into this directory, and I can check the /bin and see gcc.bat, make.bat and sh.bat in there.
I follow the directions and modify my devkit/msys/1.0.11/etc/fstab file. It now looks like this:
C:/tools/ruby/ruby19/devkit/gcc/3.4.5 /mingw C:/tools/ruby/ruby19/devkit/msys/1.0.11/usr/local /usr/local

No matter what I seem to do, I cannot for the life of me get the odbc binding gem to compile to native extensions. I keep getting the same error over and over. This is getting highly frustrating - please help!

Answer 1

You're killing yourself.

For Win32 operating systems DLLs of 0.997 are available in i386-msvcrt-ruby-odbc.zip. It contains the files odbc.so and odbc_utf8.so which need to be copied into the .../ruby/1.8/i386-msvcrt directory of MSVC based Ruby 1.8 installations.

Try putting those files where recommended, then installing that version of the gem, and see how it goes.

Answer 2

Okay, please clarify:

I did a fresh install of rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/69034/rubyinstaller-1.8.7-p249-rc2.exe and the devkit (rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/66888/devkit-3.4.5r3-20091110.7z) There was no "../ruby/1.8/i386-msvcrt" directory, so I made one. I downloaded http://www.ch-werner.de/rubyodbc/i386-msvcrt-ruby-odbc.zip and put the two files in that directory.

Then I downloaded www.ch-werner.de/rubyodbc/ruby-odbc-0.997.tar.gz, decompressed it, and followed the instructions in the readme. "ruby extconf.rb>>make>>make install" which says, "/bin/install -c -m 0755 odbc.so c:/Ruby/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/i386-msvcrt" So, now there's a /i386-msvcrt under ../ruby/site_ruby/1.8, and one under ..ruby/1.8. I suppose that's right, but it still doesn't connect to SQL Server the way it did last week before my HD crashed and I had to reinstall everything.

Very frustrating, especially since I'm probably doing something that "everyone" knows is not intended. Or, maybe I didn't read carefully enough. Whatever. At this point, I'll slavishly follow the OP's route. I am just stuck.

Answer 3

Ok, I think this is the minimum. I uninstalled everything: c:\ruby, MinGW, MSYS, all the stuff I fiddled trying to get this to run.

Then I:

1. installed Ruby One-Click: http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/69034/rubyinstaller-1.8.7-p249-rc2.exe
2. "gem install activerecord-sqlserver-adapter"
3. "gem install rails"
4. installed devkit: unzipped rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/66888/devkit-3.4.5r3-20091110.7z into c:\ruby
5. "gem install ruby-odbc", which built and installed v. 0.999
6. made a DSN called dev-travel-dsn using "Control Panel>Administrative Tools>Data Sources(ODBC)"
7. put this in my database.yml:

---

development:
    adapter: sqlserver
    mode: odbc
    dsn: dev_travel_dsn
    username: some_user
    password: some_secret
    host: some_host

---

I ran "rake db:schema:dump," which worked just fine.

It's odd, but even if you put a lot of the same things in the DSN Manager, you have to put them in database.yml, too.

Anyway, those seem to be the minimum requirements to use Sql Server/Rails 2.3.5/Windows.

Answer 4

man, i've been trying this for days! The sequence matters or what i don't know but it's finally working

Answer 5

This worked for me with rails 3 as well. I ran into 2 gotchas in the process. 1. Ruby 1.9.2 wouldn't let me install ruby-odbc so I switched back to 1.8.7. and 2. For Rails 3 you have to include the following lines in your gemfile:

gem 'activerecord-sqlserver-adapter'

gem 'ruby-odbc'

After that, the above instructions worked flawlessly!