[bricestacey]

I have not needed to add or fix a feature in a programming language but I have needed a ruby gem that uses native extensions (written in C) that are not available for my environment. I know enough C, but I have no idea how to implement this so I can't use it. Thus, instead of calling a few functions in a library I literally have to install another version of ruby, wrap the gem in some high level API, and expose the service via Sinatra, and call it via Net::HTTP. Not fun.

Particularly, libraries search their catalogs using the z39.50 protocol. Ruby 1.8 has a gem ruby-zoom[0] that does this using YAZ[1] however there is not a ruby 1.9 version. If anyone has a guide that explains native extensions for Ruby, please advise.

[0] http://ruby-zoom.rubyforge.org/ [1] http://www.indexdata.com/yaz