Question

Does anyone have any insights regarding compiling Ruby code for Windows? I’ve tried both “Ruby2Exe” and “OCRA”, but both present their own issues. Ruby2Exe keeps presenting vague or confusing warnings such as “can’t modify frozen string”. OCRA on the other hand seems to want to run your script and assumes that there are no dynamic items.

For the record, my script accepts command line arguments as well as reading in and parsing a text file. OCRA doesn’t like this aspect at all, and actually throws the warnings in my code as if I tried to run the script.

Anyway, if anyone has any quality means by which to compile ruby code for Windows, I’m all ears.

As a bit of an FYI, my goal with this particular script is to send email over SMTP. It is part of a larger non-ruby application, but the framework is incapable of sending email. I find Ruby enjoyable and rather easy to work with but don’t wish to have every end user install Ruby — hence, the need/desire to “compile” it.

I’m on a short time table and can’t really afford to expend resources on writing this in C++, etc. However, if anyone has any insights on any existing Windows-compatible libaries/applications, do tell.

Much appreciated.

Answer 1

“OCRA on the other hand seems to want to run your script…”

The constant Ocra is defined at compile-time but not at run-time. So you can include logic based on whether or not the Ocra constant is defined. For example:

   app = MyApp.new
   if not defined?(Ocra)
     app.main_loop
   end