Rails/Ruby pain - How to check if gem is UNIX/UNIX-like based?

Question

Is there any way to see if a gem is only supported on UNIX/UNIX-like systems?

Are there any gem that can "screen" all gems and see if there is any trouble using it with Windows.

Answer 1

Short answer: No.

To be honest, Windows is a second-class citizen in the Ruby world. Mostly this is because where Linux, BSD, OS X, and virtually every other POSIX-based system will agree on one thing, Windows will go and do something completely different.

Even a gem that's intended to work with Windows may break occasionally due to an oversight of the developer. Most gem authors do not have a continuous integration server that runs against Windows and depend on bug reports from users.

Supporting Windows is difficult not only because of API differences, but because of the nature of the Windows ecosystem where access to a command-line compiler is not to be taken for granted like it is on other systems. This means any gem that's not pure Ruby can be a challenge to install, especially if it has other dependencies that are tricky to get working in Windows.

The only way to know for sure is to try and install the gems and see if they work.