From: Johan Nilsson <johan.nilsson@...>
Date: 2005-01-19T17:41:02+09:00
Subject: Rubygems, native ruby extensions (and their dependencies)

The title might not be all too clear but here goes:

I'm looking into alternatives for installing my ruby extension library 
(which is used by some utility applications). I've looked at install.rb, 
setup.rb, rubyscript2exe/tar2rubyscript and finally RubyGems. Even if I'll 
right now only will be doing local installations I find RubyGems my current 
favorite - just some questions:

- How should I handle native ruby extensions (building them at install time 
is not an option here). Part of the library is implemented natively (Win32 
for now).

- How should I handle the native ruby extensions' dependencies (e.g. 
myrubyext.dll depends on boost-regex-...dll)? Where would such files go[1]?

- [a bit off-topic] Should/could I install applications through RubyGems as 
well? Any special considerations with regards to application-specific 
configuration files, invoking the application etc. Ideally I'd just like the 
user to be able to run <myappname-without-rb-extension> from the command 
line after installation.

Thanks // Johan

[1] For now I've made a hack where such dlls are put in the same directory 
as the extension dll - I then load the extension through myrubyextrb.rb, 
which on it's first line manipulates ENV['PATH'] to include the current 
directory.