therubyracer gem on windows

Question

I've been peacefully developing on Windows without adding any gems for a few weeks now and today I decided to do a bundle update, but I cannot get through this gem called therubyracer. I have the devkit installed and it is working according to the documentation's verification procedure.

My question is: is there a way to install this gem at all on windows?

And is this gem going to be required by rails 3.1 and this is why now that I do a bundle update it is being 'slipped' into the rails 3.0.8 as a gesture of early kick start for future 3.1 migration?

EDIT including Gemfile and Gemfile.lock

# Gemfile
# source 'http://rubygems.org'
source :rubygems

gem 'rails'
gem 'rake', '0.8.7'
gem 'youtube_it'
gem 'panda'
gem "nifty-generators"
# gem "mongoid", "2.0.0.rc.7"
gem "mongoid"
gem "mongoid-eager-loading"
# gem 'mongoid_search'
gem "bson_ext", ">1.1.5"
gem 'devise'
gem 'cancan'
gem 'hirb'
# gem 'heroku'
gem 'rest-client'
gem 'less' # needs the more plugin
# gem 'hash_extension'
gem 'aws-s3', :require => 'aws/s3' # s3.rb
gem 'jquery-rails', ">= 0.2.7" # rails g jquery:install
# gem 'mongrel', ">= 1.2.0.pre2"
gem 'delayed_job'
gem 'delayed_job_mongoid'
gem 'kaminari'



# Gemfile.lock
GEM
  remote: http://rubygems.org/
  specs:
    abstract (1.0.0)
    actionmailer (3.0.8)
      actionpack (= 3.0.8)
      mail (~> 2.2.19)
    actionpack (3.0.8)
      activemodel (= 3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
      builder (~> 2.1.2)
      erubis (~> 2.6.6)
      i18n (~> 0.5.0)
      rack (~> 1.2.1)
      rack-mount (~> 0.6.14)
      rack-test (~> 0.5.7)
      tzinfo (~> 0.3.23)
    activemodel (3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
      builder (~> 2.1.2)
      i18n (~> 0.5.0)
    activerecord (3.0.8)
      activemodel (= 3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
      arel (~> 2.0.10)
      tzinfo (~> 0.3.23)
    activeresource (3.0.8)
      activemodel (= 3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
    activesupport (3.0.8)
    arel (2.0.10)
    aws-s3 (0.6.2)
      builder
      mime-types
      xml-simple
    bcrypt-ruby (2.1.4-x86-mingw32)
    bson (1.3.1)
    bson_ext (1.3.1)
    builder (2.1.2)
    cancan (1.6.5)
    daemons (1.1.3)
    delayed_job (2.1.4)
      activesupport (~> 3.0)
      daemons
    delayed_job_mongoid (1.0.2)
      delayed_job (~> 2.1.1)
      mongoid (~> 2.0.0.rc)
    devise (1.3.4)
      bcrypt-ruby (~> 2.1.2)
      orm_adapter (~> 0.0.3)
      warden (~> 1.0.3)
    erubis (2.6.6)
      abstract (>= 1.0.0)
    hirb (0.4.5)
    i18n (0.5.0)
    jquery-rails (1.0.10)
      railties (~> 3.0)
      thor (~> 0.14)
    json (1.5.2)
    kaminari (0.12.4)
      rails (>= 3.0.0)
    less (1.2.21)
      mutter (>= 0.4.2)
      treetop (>= 1.4.2)
    mail (2.2.19)
      activesupport (>= 2.3.6)
      i18n (>= 0.4.0)
      mime-types (~> 1.16)
      treetop (~> 1.4.8)
    mime-types (1.16)
    mongo (1.3.1)
      bson (>= 1.3.1)
    mongoid (2.0.2)
      activemodel (~> 3.0)
      mongo (~> 1.3)
      tzinfo (~> 0.3.22)
    mongoid-eager-loading (0.3.1)
    mutter (0.5.3)
    nifty-generators (0.4.6)
    oauth (0.4.4)
    orm_adapter (0.0.5)
    panda (1.4.2)
      json
      rest-client
      ruby-hmac (>= 0.3.2)
    polyglot (0.3.1)
    rack (1.2.3)
    rack-mount (0.6.14)
      rack (>= 1.0.0)
    rack-test (0.5.7)
      rack (>= 1.0)
    rails (3.0.8)
      actionmailer (= 3.0.8)
      actionpack (= 3.0.8)
      activerecord (= 3.0.8)
      activeresource (= 3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
      bundler (~> 1.0)
      railties (= 3.0.8)
    railties (3.0.8)
      actionpack (= 3.0.8)
      activesupport (= 3.0.8)
      rake (>= 0.8.7)
      thor (~> 0.14.4)
    rake (0.8.7)
    rest-client (1.6.1)
      mime-types (>= 1.16)
    ruby-hmac (0.4.0)
    thor (0.14.6)
    treetop (1.4.9)
      polyglot (>= 0.3.1)
    tzinfo (0.3.28)
    warden (1.0.4)
      rack (>= 1.0)
    xml-simple (1.0.16)
    youtube_it (1.4.2)
      builder
      oauth (>= 0.4.4)

PLATFORMS
  x86-mingw32

DEPENDENCIES
  aws-s3
  bson_ext (> 1.1.5)
  cancan
  delayed_job
  delayed_job_mongoid
  devise
  hirb
  jquery-rails (>= 0.2.7)
  kaminari
  less
  mongoid
  mongoid-eager-loading
  nifty-generators
  panda
  rails
  rake (= 0.8.7)
  rest-client
  youtube_it

Answer 1

This is essentially what Nik has done, I believe:

In your Gemfile isolate the TheRubyRacer gem to the production environment like this:

group :production do
  gem 'therubyracer-heroku', :platform => :ruby
end

In your development environment, instead of a plain bundle install do

bundle install --without production

or, as Nik suggests, bundle install development. When you deploy to Heroku it will install the gem because it is the production environment.

Rails gurus: please suggest edits to make this less sucky.

Answer 2

The reason for all of these problems is the therubyracer-0.11.0beta1-x86-mingw32.gem and the v8.dll.

I have complied the necessary dlls and gem files and upload them to github.

download the package and follow the instructions.

https://github.com/eakmotion/therubyracer_for_windows

Answer 3

No, there is no way that I know of to currently install this gem on windows. The problem is that there is currently no pre-compiled version of the libv8 gem for Windows, and the source version is only compatible with *nix. It does not necessarily have to be that way, it just requires somebody taking the time to make the compile work for Windows. https://github.com/fractaloop/libv8

That said, Windows should come with a JScript, the Microsoft JavaScript runtime, which rails (via execjs) will automatically detect and use, so you should be able to just remove your dependency on therubyracer.

As the maintainer of that gem, this would of course make me sad, but it should get you on your way.

Answer 4

To answer part of your question about Rails 3.1, here's the deal...

Rails 3.1 currently uses a gem that requires a javascript runtime to be installed on the machine. On Mac you typically don't have to worry about this since it already has one, but Linux (and I think Windows too) you need to install one. So, therubyracer, or sometimes node or nodejs, are sometimes installed since they provide that.

However, one of the main Rails guys said they plan to fix that dependency before the final Rails 3.1 release, so hopefully that'll happen and the dependency will be gone.

Answer 5

There is build for windows. It can be manually downloaded and installed by gem install therubyracer-0.11.0beta1-x86-mingw32.gem.