Fails to install gem on mswin64

[mame]

gem install prism for mswin64 Ruby fails due to No such file or directory - make.

(Calling make during extconf.rb seems like an extremely bad idea to me.)

C:\Users\YusukeEndoh>.\ruby\local\bin\ruby -v
ruby 3.4.0dev (2024-12-03T06:49:57Z master f6b62d001a) +PRISM [x64-mswin64_140]

C:\Users\YusukeEndoh>.\ruby\local\bin\gem install prism
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR:  Error installing prism:
        ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

    current directory: C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/gems/prism-1.2.0/ext/prism
C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/ruby/local/bin/ruby.exe extconf.rb
checking for prism.h in C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/gems/prism-1.2.0/include... yes
checking for prism/extension.h in C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/gems/prism-1.2.0/ext... yes
checking for whether -fvisibility=hidden is accepted as CFLAGS... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of necessary
libraries and/or headers.  Check the mkmf.log file for more details.  You may
need configuration options.

Provided configuration options:
        --with-opt-dir
        --with-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
        --without-opt-include
        --with-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
        --without-opt-lib
        --with-make-prog
        --srcdir=.
        --curdir
        --ruby=C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/ruby/local/bin/ruby
        --enable-build-debug
        --disable-build-debug
        --enable-build-minimal
        --disable-build-minimal
extconf.rb:51:in 'Kernel#system': No such file or directory - make (Errno::ENOENT)
        from extconf.rb:51:in 'block in Object#make'
        from extconf.rb:50:in 'Dir.chdir'
        from extconf.rb:50:in 'Object#make'
        from extconf.rb:136:in '<main>'
Running make build/libprism.a with {"SOEXT" => "dll", "MAKEDIRS" => "$(COMSPEC) /E:ON /C $(top_srcdir:/=\\)\\win32\\makedirs.bat", "RMALL" => "$(COMSPEC) /C $(top_srcdir:/=\\)\\win32\\rm.bat -f -r"}

To see why this extension failed to compile, please check the mkmf.log which can be found here:

  C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/extensions/x64-mswin64-140/3.4.0+1/prism-1.2.0/mkmf.log

extconf failed, exit code 1

Gem files will remain installed in C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/gems/prism-1.2.0 for inspection.
Results logged to C:/Users/YusukeEndoh/scoop/persist/ruby/gems/extensions/x64-mswin64-140/3.4.0+1/prism-1.2.0/gem_make.out

[eregon]

Do you have make installed? (if so, how would it get added to PATH?)
Or only nmake?
https://github.com/ruby/prism/blob/main/Makefile needs make/gmake, at least in the current state. It contains the logic to build libprism.

Calling make during extconf.rb seems like an extremely bad idea to me.

I think it is common and fine, here it is used to build libprism.so/dylib/dll, I think sqlite3 and nokogiri and plenty of other gems do the same when they need to build a regular dynamic library not linking to any Ruby API, and then an extension library linking to that library. Notably it enables having other cflags than what CRuby uses.
Note that we cannot just "flatten" all files for libprism in the extension easily, because the FFI backend and other cases needs a libprism.so/dylib/dll.

[tenderlove]

@eregon do we really need to call make in the CRuby case though? It feels like extconf.rb could just compile the C files on its own without building the .a file first. I don't understand why this step is necessary (on CRuby anyway).

[kddnewton]

@flavorjones would probably have a little more context on this since he helped put this together. But it's my understanding that extconf's responsibility (in the current setup) is to compile the extension, whereas we rely on make to compile the static library. I think we could change it, truthfully I'm not sure of the implications.

[tenderlove]

AFAICT, we would have to copy the Prism source in to the ext folder when we compile the extension. But I don't think that's a problem.

[eregon]

That's what I meant by "flatten" above. One concern is we would stop being in control of the cflags, which I think on its own is a non-trivial concern, it seems best to always compile prism non-extension C files with a consistent set of flags and a unique way to describe how to compile them (the Makefile at the root).
For example I think different flags like optimization levels or some -f flags could break Prism.
Different warnings flags could miss important warnings or cause compilation to fail if -Werror is added somehow.
Right now, no matter how Prism is used (C extension, FFI, in JRuby, in TruffleRuby, etc), it's always compiled with the same flags, I think this is valuable.
(there is one exception, the copy of Prism in CRuby doesn't use Prism's Makefile, this has already caused problems such as incorrect incremental compilation due to missing dependencies and added complexity)

Note the libprism.a is also used by TruffleRuby, so we would not be able to remove that logic but we'd have yet another way to build Prism, which seems bad complexity-wise.

But I don't think that's a problem.

One consequence I can think of is in development one would see 2 copies of each .c file in their editor/IDE. That's a potential to waste some time editing the wrong file.

@mame Could you confirm on your system you only have nmake, no make or gmake?
If that's the case, indeed it's annoying and it might be worth the unfortunate workaround of copying the prism C files under ext/ in extconf.rb.
Or maybe maintaining a Makefile.win32 or so in the prism gem for nmake.
OTOH, I suspect other gems require make/gmake, so one might consider an environment without make to be incomplete to install gems with C extensions (in general).

[tenderlove]

For example I think different flags like optimization levels or some -f flags could break Prism.

This seems bad doesn't it? It feels like Prism should work with any optimization level or -f flag. If it doesn't, it seems like we should fix it.

Different warnings flags could miss important warnings or cause compilation to fail if -Werror is added somehow.

We should maintain a Makefile in Prism and test compilation with these different flags.

Note the libprism.a is also used by TruffleRuby, so we would not be able to remove that logic but we'd have yet another way to build Prism, which seems bad complexity-wise.

It seems like the Prism gem is treating the Prism C library (libprism.a) as if it's a "package that hasn't been installed yet", and is taking on the responsibility of compiling / installing that package on the user's system. In other words, we're taking on the complexity of knowing how to correctly install a C library on all systems. This seems fraught to me (and is a problem that mkmf is designed to solve).

Is TruffleRuby using the .a file that gets built along side this gem? Presumably you can install TruffleRuby without the Prism gem?

[mame]

I don't have make or gmake because it is a pure Windows with Visual C++. nmake is available. I followed this instruction to build ruby.

I agree with @tenderlove . Calling the make command on your own could require the reinvention of some parts of mkmf. It would waste your (and users') time.

[flavorjones]

Calling "make" from the extconf was intended to be a temporary solution to help transition the project from "just build a static archive" to "ship a static archive and a shared object file and also make a gem out of it".

There were a few different opinions on how to proceed, and it wasn't clear how TruffleRuby integration or CRuby integration was going to be implemented. My recollection is that once we had something working, we all moved onto more urgent tasks rather than argue about how to finish untangling it.

[tenderlove]

There were a few different opinions on how to proceed, and it wasn't clear how TruffleRuby integration or CRuby integration was going to be implemented.

I think my solution in #3289 continues to support CRuby and non-CRuby implementations correctly. IMO we should think about the Prism repository as actually containing 2 different projects:

1. A C library used for parsing Ruby code: libprism
2. A Ruby gem that wraps the C library: prism

I think the goals for libprism are as follows:

1. It can parse Ruby code and produce an AST
2. It is an independent, stand-alone parser (it has no dependencies on CRuby, or hopefully any other library)

The second goal means that fully embedding the source of libprism in a gem (say a gem called "prism"), or even in a programming language runtime (say "CRuby") should be a supported / valid use cases.

Since libprism is a stand-alone C library which can be embedded for use in any project, it's important that we maintain a Makefile (or configure scripts, etc) so that people who want to build libprism can do so, and also so that we can run CI with different C compilers and different compilation flags.

Anyway, I don't think anything I've written above is contrary to anything anyone else here has said. But it's the mental framework I used for the changes in #3289, and why I think it's ok for the gem to stop producing an intermediate .a file, and just compile / link against the libprism C source files directly.