ThoughtWork’s Mingle on X64 machines

By default, 32 bit applications installed on 64 bit machines are installed into the \Program Files (x86) directory.

Mingle, in particular, Ruby doesn’t like the brackets in this path, hence, when Mingle tries to start, it fails.  It writes the following entries to the log file in the program’s directory:

Failed to load Rails: C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/app/controllers/caching/keys.rb:1: Invalid char `\257’ (‘¯’) in expression C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/vendor/rails/activesupport/lib/active_support/dependencies.rb:505:in `load’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:475:in `load_application_initializers’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:474:in `each’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:474:in `load_application_initializers’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:145:in `process’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/../vendor/rails/railties/lib/initializer.rb:93:in `run’ C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/environment.rb:116 C:/Program Files (x86)/Mingle_2_2/config/environment.rb:1

The solution: change the default installation to just \Program Files.  Handy.  If you want to use Mingle.  On a 64 bit machine.