How do I build IronRuby on Visual C# 2008 Express Edition?

Question

From the docs it should be possible. I built it on VS 2008 myself - so the source (Sep 8 Master) is okay.

I'm trying to build it now with VS Express Edition on this machine. Installed 4.0 Framework Beta 1. Open the Ruby.sln file ; the IDE won't open any of the .csproj files in the solution

Unable to read project file '<something>.csproj
Path to Framework\v4.0..\Microsoft.Common.Targets(2893,9): The attribute "Keep Duplicate Outputs" in element <Target> is unrecognized.

I tried to remove the offending attribute from the above file. The csproj files then load but result in build errors of the form

Error   54 The "Microsoft.Build.Tasks.Message" task could not be loaded from the assembly Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a. Could not load file or assembly 'Microsoft.Build.Tasks.v4.0, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a' or one of its dependencies. The system cannot find the file specified. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, and that the assembly and all its dependencies are available. IronRuby.Tests

Answer 1

You can't build 4.0 projects with 2008 For that you need 2010 beta1 (it's a free download) Or you need to install .NET 3.5 on your machine and try again with 2008. That does work for me but I don't have an express edition.

Also I generally tend to build using Rake (i don't have to open a visual studio session for that). to do that (build with rake) do the following

download the ruby 1.8 installer from ruby-lang.org install ruby 1.8 gem install pathname2 make sure you have .NET 3.5 and the windows SDK (resgen.exe and csc.exe) must both exist on your system and their paths have to be added to the %PATH% variable. set %MERLIN_ROOT% = C:\path\to\ironruby_clone\Merlin\Main

build a debug version rake compile

build a release version rake compile configuration=release

to include the ironpython binaries in your release build too. rake compile:all configuration=release