There are a number of different ways to install Weft QDA. They're listed below, in descending order of ease. You only need to use one of these methods, and unless you're interested in the technical aspects of Weft, you should probably choose an installer or compiled binary.
Installing on Microsoft Windows should be a simple matter of downloading the most recent installer from the Weft QDA website. Save the installer file to disk, then click on the downloaded file to start the automatic installation process. During this you'll be offered the choices to install the help file and to add shortcuts to your menu. It's recommended that you accept both. When the installation process is complete, Weft QDA can be started by clicking its icon in the system menu.
Weft QDA is written the programming language Ruby. Rubygems is a package manager for Ruby, and is probably to get Weft QDA and its required packages if you cannot use an installer. You will first need to install Ruby itself, if you do not already have it. Then you will need to install wxruby, and possibly the sqlite library if you do not already have it.
All the other requirements can be installed automatically usingn rubygems. Run
"gem install weft-qda" to download and install the weft-qda gem, plus all the other
require ruby packages. Weft QDA can then be run by running the installed weft-qda.rb
from your ruby bin dir - often
/usr/local/bin/ruby/weft_qda.rb on Linux or
C:/ruby/bin/weft_qda.rb on Windows.
If you need or prefer to run from a standard source code package, this is available as a standard tarball for use on Windows and Linux. You will have to download and install all the requirements, as listed above.
The source is organised so that it can be run in-place, provided all the prerequisites above are fulfilled. Simply unpack the tarball, and run "ruby weft-qda.rb" in the base directory. There is currently no 'setup.rb' to support installing weft's libraries into Ruby's standard library directories.