diff --git a/railties/lib/tasks/framework.rake b/railties/lib/tasks/framework.rake
index 71aea09..d1827fc 100644
--- a/railties/lib/tasks/framework.rake
+++ b/railties/lib/tasks/framework.rake
@@ -44,7 +44,23 @@ namespace :rails do
       version = ENV["RELEASE"] || "edge"
       target  = "rails_#{version}.zip"
       url     = "http://dev.rubyonrails.org/archives/#{target}"
+      
+      begin
+        require "zip/zip"
+        require "zip/zipfilesystem"
+        rubyzip = true
+      rescue LoadError
+        rubyzip = false
+      end
+      
+      #horrible
+      system_unzip = `unzip`.inspect == "nil" ? false : true
 
+      if system_unzip == false && rubyzip == false
+        puts "The rubyzip gem was not found, and the system did not have a native unzip command. Please install the rubyzip gem with 'gem install rubyzip'."
+        exit
+      end
+            
       chdir 'vendor' do
         puts "Downloading Rails from #{url}"
         File.open('rails.zip', 'wb') do |dst|
@@ -54,10 +70,25 @@ namespace :rails do
             end
           end
         end
-
-        puts 'Unpacking Rails'
+                
+        
+        print 'Unpacking Rails'
         rm_rf 'rails'
-        `unzip rails.zip`
+        if system_unzip
+          `unzip rails.zip`
+        else
+          Zip::ZipFile.open('rails.zip') do |zip|
+            zip.each do |entry|
+              fpath = File.join(pwd, 'rails', entry.name)
+              FileUtils.mkdir_p(File.dirname(fpath))
+              zip.extract(entry, fpath)
+              $stdout.print "."
+              $stdout.flush
+            end
+          end
+          puts ""
+        end
+        
         %w(rails.zip rails/Rakefile rails/cleanlogs.sh rails/pushgems.rb rails/release.rb).each do |goner|
           rm_f goner
         end