To compile: $ rake To test: $ rake spec Take a look at the files in “specifications” to see some examples of how to load the library and use the methods. It’s basically the following: require 'encoding/character/utf-8' str = +"äbc" str_that_is_the_same_as_previous_str = u"äbc" There’s no install task yet, so until then, just load Ruby as follows: $ ruby -Ilib:ext and you’ll be able to require the library as shown above. I’ll try to learn Ruby Gems tonight, so hopefully there’ll be a way to install this library as a gem by tomorrow!