Building a Windows executable from my Ruby app?

Question

I'd like to be able to send a Ruby app to some colleagues without requiring them to install a Ruby interpreter. A single exe would be preferable.

I googled and found "RubyScript2Exe".

What are your experiences with that? Are there other such tools or are there better approaches altogether than building an exe?

Answer 1

I've used it about 3 times and I haven't had any problems with it and I ran one of the apps on 10 servers and never had any issues. So, I think RubyScript2Exe is about as good as it gets for ruby.

Answer 2

_why's Shoes framework lets you package the program as an executable for Mac or Windows that installs Shoes (contains a Ruby interpreter). Information about using the packager is here. _why also gives hints about how he makes the Windows executable here.

Answer 3

Don't forget OCRA [1] which I used a couple of times and which Just Worked. I used to create my exes with RubyScript2Exe as mentioned above but had problems when used with Ruby 1.9 [2].

[1] http://ocra.rubyforge.org/
[2] http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/343891