From: Jim Menard <jimm@...>
Date: 2005-03-25T23:06:32+09:00
Subject: Rake, rdoc, and Windows

Herein is described a problem with using Rake's RDocTask on Windows, and a 
proposed workaround. The workaround works well enough, but does anybody else 
have a better one?

While prepping my latest project for gemhood, I came across a problem with the 
rdoc task when used on Windows XP: it didn't work. This is documented in a few 
old ruby-talk posts. (See 
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/118963?help-en and 
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/118968 for some 
proposed solutions).

Even after fixing the problem by applying the patch described in 118968, there 
was still another problem: the rdoc.bat file (and all Windows batch files) 
only take up to nine arguments. Eight command line options are used by the 
rdoc command before the first file is even mentioned:

rdoc.bat -o html --main 'README' --title 'MyProjectName' -T 'html' README TODO 
lib/xx.rb lib/xx/file1.rb lib/xx/file2.rb ...

Here's what I have come up with: instead of the method proposed in 118968

     def rdoc
       RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /win32/ ? 'rdoc.bat' : 'rdoc'
     end

(and the associated change in RDocTask#define that calls this method), I use

     def rdoc
       return 'rdoc' unless RUBY_PLATFORM =~ /win32/
       require 'rbconfig'
       bindir = Config::CONFIG['bindir']
       return "#{File.join(bindir, 'ruby.exe')} #{File.join(bindir, 'rdoc')}"
     end

Will this work on all Windows systems, and is it the right thing to do? If so, 
is it an appropriate addition to Rake itself?

Jim
-- 
Jim Menard, jimm@io.com, http://www.io.com/~jimm
"This looks like a job for emergency pants!" -- Torg, www.sluggy.com