Gem update on Windows - is it broken?

Question

This is a follow-up to this question.

When I issue the gem update command on Windows, whenever it gets to a gem whose latest version DOESN'T have Windows binaries, it'll attempt to build the native extension which will, of course, fail. For example:

Updating sqlite3-ruby
Building native extensions.  This could take a while...
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::Installer::ExtensionBuildError)
  ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

c:/ruby/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb update
checking for fdatasync() in rt.lib... no
checking for sqlite3.h... no

nmake
'nmake' is not recognized as an internal or external command,
operable program or batch file.

The old pre-1.x behavior of asking for the required platform at least made updating possible. Now I can't update at all unless I uninstall the troublesome gems (currently sqlite3-ruby and hpricot), run the update, then re-install the gems using the --version switch.

Does anyone have a solution to this conundrum or are we stuck with it?

---

Note:

$ gem -v
1.2.0

$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i386-mswin32]

---

Note (26 September 2008): I just updated to gems 1.3.0 and this problem persists.

Note (18 November 2008): Just updated to gems 1.3.1 and the problem persists.

Note (28 April 2009): The latest version of Gems (1.3.2) now skips any gems where building of native extensions fails during update; in other words, the problem is fixed. Hooray!

Answer 1

Gems, as of version 1.3.2, will now skip gems that fail to build, so update Rubygems to the latest version and the problem discussed here should be solved.

gem update --system

The following solution is now deprecated, but I leave it here for the record.

I started a thread on this issue on the Ruby Forum (it's a front end to the mailing list). There's some interesting discussion; it's worth a read. There's even a very hacky solution to this problem on there:

`gem.bat outdated`.split(/\n/).map{|z|z.scan(/^[^[:space:]]+/)}.flatten.each{|z| `gem.bat update #{z}`}

It calls the gem outdated command and builds a list of all of the outdated gems. It then iterates over the list and calls gem update for each individual outdated gem. If one fails, it just moves onto the next.