Installing Ruby

So far we've seen how to prepare Command Prompt for the main player – Ruby. Now it's time to install it. In next few paragraphs we will learn how to do that in several ways. From the simplest to the most complicated. But don't be afraid. Most complicated actually is not so complicated at all. It just requires all knowledge we've collected in the meantime.

Besides Ruby we will introduce few more tools and extensions which are either essential for real Ruby development or are just improvements that will make our work easier. Almost everything needed for this chapter can be downloaded from the RubyInstaller site. RubyInstaller is successor of One-Click Installer which brought new, much better, way of using Ruby on Windows. Main goal of this project is to provide Windows developers easy way to use MRI-based (Matz's Ruby Implementation) Ruby with complete build environment needed for some Ruby extensions written in C. Moreover it gives developers possibility to build Ruby and even customize it if needed.