Installing Ruby on Windows

There are two compilers that allow you to build Ruby for Windows:

• MinGW which uses Native Windows libraries
• Cygwin which replicates a POSIX (Unix) environment

In this tutorial we are going to use RubyInstaller, which is the quickest way to install MinGW-compiled Ruby. We’ll install Ruby 1.8

1. Download and run RubyInstaller 1.8.6 Patch 383 from their RubyForge Files page. The latest version is Preview 2.
2. Follow the Development Kit QuickStart Installation. This is necessary to build certain ruby packages (gems), which many ruby-based applications need.

That’s it!

RubyInstaller allows you to have Ruby 1.8 and 1.9 installed simultaneously. You can easily switch between them using pik. Follow the installation directions in the README