Adding Ruby fast-debugger to Windows

I've recently started to use Netbeans at work for my Ruby development (I fancy having a go with RubyMine, but Netbeans will do for now. RubyMine looks v similar but is more Rubyesque (of course) and permits easier remote debugging).

One issue with the Windows installation is that the ruby-debug-ide gem will not install; it's unable to build from native extensions. The fix I found is in the following comment (not in the main article):

http://www.definenull.com/content/netbeans-6-ruby-fast-debugger#comment-251

If that comment goes, here are the instructions:

RubyInstaller DevKit fixes this

If you install Ruby using RubyInstaller (http://rubyinstaller.org/download.html), and next install RubyInstaller Development Kit (http://wiki.github.com/oneclick/rubyinstaller/development-kit) on top of that, then the NetBeans "Install Fast Debugger" feature works without problems.


The RubyInstaller Development Kit provides some standalone elements of MinGW for compiling Ruby native C extensions.


Joe Howse

So basically, install the DevKit and then the gem installation from inside Netbeans works fine. Thanks to "Joe Howse"!

UPDATE : Ruby 1.9.3

For details of the installation alongside Ruby 1.9.x (there are xxxxx19 versions of most of the Gems involved as the 1.8.x versions don't work) see here.

Although I still couldn't get it to work inside of Netbeans - 'debugger' might be the option.

Also, do install the correct DevKit version! Stack-Overflow.