How to install a Ruby Gem for use in SketchUp

Dan Rathbun

Re: Ruby Interpreter DLL: SketchUp vs Standard

I downloaded the normal standard v 1.8.0 patch level 10 DLL (msvcrt-ruby18.dll) from:
http://www.oldapps.com/Ruby.php?old_ruby=12
and compared it against the backup that was installed with Sketchup v7.0 application.

Both standard DOS command comp and the Support Tool WinDiff report both DLL files are identical.

*(WinDiff is a file comparison utility that is installed with Windows Support Tools. The Support Tools are not installed automatically with Windows. You must manually browse the WIN install CD to the "Support Tools" folder, and run a separate setup.exeto install the tools.)

Dan Rathbun

Re: Ruby Interpreter DLL: SketchUp vs Standard

The Support Tool filever.exe displays versioning information inside exe and dll files:

DOS cmd shell, filever verbose listing, in folder:
C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7_Backup
This is the DLL file distro'd with Sketchup 7.x

>filever msvcrt-ruby18.dll /v
--a-- W32i   DLL   -         1.8.0.0 shp    811,008 02-19-2009 msvcrt-ruby18.dll

        Language        0x0000 (Language Neutral)
        CharSet         0x04b0 Unicode
        OleSelfRegister Disabled
        FileDescription Ruby interpreter
        InternalName    msvcrt-ruby18.dll
        OriginalFilenam msvcrt-ruby18.dll
        ProductVersion  1,8,0,0
        FileVersion     1,8,0,0
        LegalCopyright  Copyright (C) 1993-2003 Yukihiro Matsumoto
        OleSelfRegister Disabled

        VS_FIXEDFILEINFO;
        Signature;      feef04bd
        Struc Ver;      00010000
        FileVer;        00010008;00000000 (1.8;0.0)
        ProdVer;        00010008;00000000 (1.8;0.0)
        FlagMask;       0000003f
        Flags;          00000000
        OS;             00000004 Win32
        FileType;       00000002 Dll
        SubType;        00000000
        FileDate;       00000000;00000000

This is the DLL file distro'd with Ruby ver 1.8.0-10

>filever v180-10\msvcrt-ruby18.dll /v
--a-- W32i   DLL   -         1.8.0.0 shp    811,008 08-11-2003 msvcrt-ruby18.dll

        Language        0x0000 (Language Neutral)
        CharSet         0x04b0 Unicode
        OleSelfRegister Disabled
        FileDescription Ruby interpreter
        InternalName    msvcrt-ruby18.dll
        OriginalFilenam msvcrt-ruby18.dll
        ProductVersion  1,8,0,0
        FileVersion     1,8,0,0
        LegalCopyright  Copyright (C) 1993-2003 Yukihiro Matsumoto
        OleSelfRegister Disabled

        VS_FIXEDFILEINFO;
        Signature;      feef04bd
        Struc Ver;      00010000
        FileVer;        00010008;00000000 (1.8;0.0)
        ProdVer;        00010008;00000000 (1.8;0.0)
        FlagMask;       0000003f
        Flags;          00000000
        OS;             00000004 Win32
        FileType;       00000002 Dll
        SubType;        00000000
        FileDate;       00000000;00000000

*(filever is a file version utility that is installed with Windows Support Tools. The Support Tools are not installed automatically with Windows. You must manually browse the WIN install CD to the "Support Tools" folder, and run a separate setup.exeto install the tools.)

AdamB

Given there are many fixes between 1.8.0 and 1.8.6 - and using 1.8.6 doesn't seem to cause problems - I don't know why Google are shipping quite so old a dll. In particular, I noticed a few fixes in the changelogs to Ruby related to memory leaks.

FYI Mac Sketchup uses 1.8.5

Adam

Dan Rathbun

Re: Ruby Interpreter DLL: SketchUp vs Standard

The Support Tool bindiff.exe reports both files are identical.

DOS cmd shell in folder:
C:\Program Files\Google\Google SketchUp 7_Backup

>bindiff /c msvcrt-ruby18.dll v180-10\msvcrt-ruby18.dll

Identical  811,008 bytes

File Count Summary
   Identical;      1 files
   Near Identical; 0 files
   Different;      0 files
   Left Only;      0 files
   Right Only;     0 files
   Errors;         0 files
   Total;          1 files

Byte Count Summary
   Matched;    0 bytes differ
   Left Only;  0 bytes
   Right Only; 0 bytes
   Total;      0 bytes

*(bindiff is a binary file comparison utility that is installed with Windows Support Tools. The Support Tools are not installed automatically with Windows. You must manually browse the WIN install CD to the "Support Tools" folder, and run a separate setup.exeto install the tools.)

Dan Rathbun

@adamb said:

... I don't know why Google are shipping quite so old a dll. ...
It may just be a staffing issue, they know it works with 1.8.0, but are probably reluctant to ship with 1.8.6 without massive testing. I can see management feeling such an task as being low priority.

There was also at least one person at Google, who thought wrongly (the removed quote above,) that Ruby for Sketchup had to remain at v1.8.0 because the DLL (they thought,) had been extensively modified and compiled specially for Sketchup; and that to update to 1.8.6 or any other later release would be a huge project, not likely to occur any time soon.
__Well, I think I've proved that assumption incorrect. The Ruby Interpreter DLLs are just copies of those distro'd with standard Ruby.

@adamb said:

Given there are many fixes between 1.8.0 and 1.8.6 - and using 1.8.6 doesn't seem to cause problems - ... In particular, I noticed a few fixes in the changelogs to Ruby related to memory leaks.
A good reason to use 1.8.6 with Sketchup, and I have been since a few days after I installed 7.0 (and have had no problems, so far.)

I would feel that 1.8.7 is still not ready (it just had a recent release to fix major security bugs.) But it's almost there.

I tried to get Sketchup to load 1.9.1, but it did not like the DLL. I got the 'Entry Point Not Found' error. (Not sure if it was the Ruby guys who changed things, or if it was me renaming the msvcrt-ruby191.dll to msvcrt-ruby18.dll that was the problem.)

There are those of us, who wish to run newer Ruby releases (especially the non-english users who need multibyte character support in the 1.9.x branch.) We should be able to run any Ruby release we wish.. and it would be nice if Sketchup was setup to facilitate our choice.

@adamb said:

FYI Mac Sketchup uses 1.8.5
I suspect because of the major differences in OSX and Win32 programming, that there are different people working on the two implementations.

Does OSX Leopard come with ver 1.8.5 pre-installed?
_

Whaat

hmmm...I replaced the original DLL with the 1.8.6 version and I am now getting this message at Startup
Error Loading File ruby-prof.rb
no such file to load -- erb

I have ruby-prof.so, ruby-prof.rb and the ruby-prof folder in my plugins folder. Any ideas?

tbd

comment out these lines from ruby-prof.rb if you dont want pretty outputs or add erb.rb to your ruby-prof dir (I choosed the first one )

require "ruby-prof/graph_printer"
require "ruby-prof/graph_html_printer"

driven

@dan rathbun said:

Anyone want to make a Mac version out of this?
_

making one is out of my league, but I'd like to use it if someone does, I'm attempting to learn ruby as my first, ever, programming language, any tools that work with ruby, SU and Mac should aid may grasp on the mechanics...

any other recommendations welcome.

john

EDIT: I was digging around in systems library and came across this, can anyone shine a light on it's meaning and if it may be causing any of the many Mac ruby glitches that rear their heads.

Notes on building the stand-alone reader.

When trying to link with only MacWin and Utils, EqualTol came up as an unresolved external, so someone must be including Tol.h or something at the wrong level.
Text.cpp in Model includes BaseApp/BaseAppServices.h. It is calling GetActiveView(). It should be restructured so that it doesn't need to call this.
Model/MergeController.cpp is calling AppServices::GetUndoManager() which is not defined at the Model level.
InstancePath.cpp and SectionPlane.cpp both reference CPickRecord which is not defined at the Model level.
SteStatusText should be removed from PushPullController.cpp
The output variable for OpenDocument should be of type IDocument rather than IDispatch.
Need Mac implementations of OpenDocument and CloseDocument.
(added in special reader version of XApplication.cpp)
OpenDocument and CloseDocument are not implemented in the standard version of XApplicaiton. I have copied XAxpplication to the Reader folder so that I can implement this for the reader without changing SketchUp. After 3.0 releases, these implementations should be merged.
IApplication::CloseDocument is a worthless method. There should really be a Close method on Document instead. Or at least CloseDocument should take an argument to tell you which document you should close. Maybe XDocument should delete the CSketchUpModel if it was created by a call to OpenDocument?
Some methods still return IDispatch* rather than the real type. For example, get_Relationships.

Dan Rathbun

@driven said:

EDIT: I was digging around in systems library and came across this, can anyone shine a light on it's meaning and if it may be causing any of the many Mac ruby glitches that rear their heads.

Notes on building the stand-alone reader.

That looks like it refers to the C++ files for building the SKP Reader extension for a third-party application. So those 'issues' are C++ issues with the SKP Reader SDK, not Sketchup itself or the SU Ruby API.

Dan Rathbun

@adamb said:

I've build it on a Mac and works just fine.
I had to remove some Rails stuff from the startup but it works pretty nicely too.

erb.rb is in the standard ruby library.
If you have a full ruby install, you need to add paths to the $: ($LOAD_PATH) array.
[OR.. you could try to comment the stuff for erb out and see if it runs.]

Here's a little script I had posted over at Google Groups for Win32 to load standard ruby paths.

-- !loadpaths.rb --
CODE moved to it's own post and updated. (06 JUL 2010)
http://forums.sketchucation.com/viewtopic.php?f=180&t=29412

Anyone want to make a Mac version out of this?
_

dney

I was trying to use a gem named "cfpropertylist" to create an export script on Mac OS X (Lion) with sketchup 8. I had lots of problems, but finally got it working. Others using Mac may be interested.

I installed the GEM to the standard OS X installed ruby (version 1.8.7). I did "sudo gem install CFPropertyList-2.0.17.gem".
That worked, but messed up the permissions on the files so non-superusers could not read the files. I think this may be because I had a weird umask. I used /bin/find to fix that up.
Then I could require cfpropertylist in an irb session.

I then tried to require it in a sample script I loaded in the sketchup ruby console. But it got a file not found. I found a post about replacing the ruby provided with sketchup with the standard OS X ruby on stack overflow: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3333163/how-to-update-ruby-in-google-sketchup. That worked even thou I have sketchup 8 (and there was no Headers there originally, but I linked one in anyways).

I also saw posts about modifying LOAD_PATH to include the standard dirs. So I put this at the front of my test script:


osx_stdlibpath = ["/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8", "/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/powerpc-darwin11.0", "/Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/universal-darwin11.0", "/Library/Ruby/Site", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8/universal-darwin11.0", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin11.0", "/System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/universal-darwin11.0", "."]

$LOAD_PATH.concat(osx_stdlibpath)
$LOAD_PATH.uniq!

It still did not work.
Finally I figured out that I had to require the stuff for GEM in order for it to find the package.
Guess it makes sense--I think irb was including the GEM loader for me.

So I put this into my script after the code modifying LOAD_PATH:


require 'rubygems'

And finally the require of CFPropertyList worked!
-Derek

Dan Rathbun

Good job Derek !

1) Now can you d/l and install gems from within Sketchup embedded Ruby ??

2) You are running OSX Lion, so I assume your machine is Intel based. I wonder why you need to add platform dir paths for a PowerPC (MacOS9) platform ??

3) The following dir paths should not have files in them, only subdirs. Why add them ??

" /Library/Ruby/Site"
" /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby"

4) You also add the current working directory, ie: " ." (which can change from time to time, via calls to Dir.chdir in other author's plugins.) So, is this necessary for RubyGems ??

5) After require('rubygems') returns (sucessfully,) has it added any paths to the $LOAD_PATH array ??