Installing Ruby 1.8.7 (and other stuff) manually

Question

I don\'t want to rely on the one-click installer any more, and I want to learn how to install Ruby manually. Is there a resource for this?

Answer 1

I've pretty much concluded that Ruby 1.8.7 just isn't stable yet for Windows. I was able to get it running on one Vista machine following the instructions above but not my laptop.

For the laptop I followed the following steps and everything seems to be working so far:

• Install 1.8.6 using the 1-click installer. Let it delete old copies of Ruby if necessary.
• Install gems 1.3.4
• gem install rails
• ruby script\console
• point browser to http://localhost:3000/. Make sure everything works as expected
• stop console
• extract 1.8.7 zip file into the Ruby 1.8.6 directory
• copy dll files discussed above into the ruby/bin directory
• restart console and again check http://localhost:3000/

I would only follow these directions as a last resort if the instructions above don't work.

Before you wag a finger at me and scold me for this approach...

please consider that I spent ~8 hours reading and trying everything possible and was able to use the approach above successfully on another computer. I'm open to other suggestions!