[ruby-core:34355] [Ruby 1.9-Feature#4265][Open] Provide a core method Kernel#ruby for invoking a new Ruby instance

Feature #4265: Provide a core method Kernel#ruby for invoking a new Ruby instance
http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/show/4265

Author: Charles Nutter
Status: Open, Priority: Normal

Many libraries re-launch Ruby to perform additional tasks. Sometimes this is done for process isolation, sometimes it's to change startup command-line for a subset of work, and sometimes it's just the easiest way to launch a clean Ruby environment. In almost every case, the command line is built using "ruby" explicitly as the command to be executed. This only works if the Ruby version/implementation you want to run is installed as "ruby" and exists on PATH. If, for example, you are running JRuby, you most likely want the subprocess to launch a new JRuby instance. I propose that we add a standard way to launch a new Ruby instance to Kernel.

Kernel#ruby would launch, in an implementation-specific way, a new instance of the *current* Ruby. On normal C Ruby, this would simply use the full path to the executing "ruby" binary (using appropriate name, like "/usr/bin/ruby1.9" if necessary) and launch it directly, given the specified parameters. On implementations like JRuby, which can launch many instances in the same JVM, the Kernel#ruby method could simple launch a new instance of JRuby. In both cases, it would avoid problems with expecting libraries to build their own command line (and usually getting it wrong).

The method would take, at minimum, a set of command-line parameters to the new instance. These could be in the form of an array of strings, a set of string parameters, or a single string parameter (I don't know which is best). There may be a need for non-command-line options to the #ruby method, so the array or single string might be best (for example, an option to specify whether to attempt to keep the launch in-process, using some form of MVM)

The method would launch Ruby with the given command-line parameters in some implementation-specific way.

The method could either return streams and pid, like p/open/3/4, or simply return the subprocess's output. There could also be a separate #ruby_open to do popen-like stream-driving.

The method should be backported to 1.8.7, ideally, so that libraries could freely start to use it as soon as possible.

Example usages:

ruby "-e 'puts 1'"
in, out, err = ruby "-EUTF-8", mvm:true


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