[ruby-core:18019] Re: RUBY_ENGINE?

From: "Charles Oliver Nutter" <[e-mail]>
> Bill Kelly wrote:
>> (Note, I don't have any vested interest in this, I am merely quoting 
>> from the IRC logs... For example, I don't
>> know why it was important to find the current running
>> binary.  But I'm not sure how RUBY_ENGINE was supposed
>> to help in the ../../blah/bin/ruby situation anyway? :)
> 
> Say you have a library written in C for MRI, modified C or Ruby with 
> Rubinius features on Rubinius, or using Java in JRuby. It would be much 
> nicer to be able to do:
> 
> require "my_library/platform/#{RUBY_ENGINE}_api"
> 
> Rather than a series of if/else checks that use a combination of 
> variables. As much as Rubinius, JRuby, MRI, IronRuby may look the same 
> as far as normal Ruby code, there are differences in how they integrate 
> with the underlying platform and differences in how you may want to use 
> them. And currently there's no simple way to definitively know which 
> Ruby implementation you're using. RUBY_ENGINE is just one constant that 
> will solve that problem forever...I'm not sure why there's so much 
> resistance to adding it.

I've been hesitant to respond; I don't want to clutter up the thread
given that I don't have any say in this anyway either way.

But for what it's worth, your require example above makes perfect
sense to me.  And (as an observer) I'm not personally against
RUBY_ENGINE at all.  But it's nice to see a use case I can readily
understand.  (I admit to having been perplexed over the prospect of
using RUBY_ENGINE to locate the active ruby executable binary.)


Regards,

Bill