[Wxruby-dev] Problems building wxruby

[Kevin Smith]

Tonight I tried to compile Park's wxruby for the first time. I'm running
Debian Sarge Linux ("Testing"). The best news is that Sarge just updated
from wxGTK 2.2 to 2.4 last week, so I don't have to worry about that.

First problem: The `wx-config --cflags` trick is not supported by my
default C++ compiler (gcc 3.2.3). So I had to tweak the Makefile to use
gcc-2.95 instead. At least, I think that's what I had to do. Assuming
this is true, it's something the wxWindows folks should have to solve
and we should be able to inherit their solution.

But I'm still getting compile errors, which I figured out are because
I'm still using Ruby 1.6.7. Since 1.6 is still the latest stable
version, I really think we need to target it instead of 1.7/1.8. Does
anyone disagree?

>From what I can tell, this means avoiding StringValuePtr,
rb_define_alloc_func, and probably a few others. We could import the
code for them from Ruby 1.7 and #ifdef them into the wxruby code, if
they are really useful.

I would really appreciate if someone with knowlege of these 1.8 features
could provide 1.6-compatible alternatives. Ideally these changes would
go in Park's version, but for the moment I would be content with enough
information to make changes to my local wxruby sources.

Until then, I think I'm pretty much blocked from doing more work on
wxruby.

Thanks,

Kevin