From: Charles Steinman <acharlieblue@...>
Date: 2005-06-05T11:40:25+09:00
Subject: Re: Package, a future replacement for setup.rb and mkmf.rb

Jim Freeze wrote:
> * Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com> [2005-06-05 07:59:15 +0900]:
>
> > In Ruby, this would maybe look like that:
> >
> >   require 'package'
> >
> >   setup {
> >     name "Distutils"
> >     version "0.1.1"
> >     description "Python Module Distribution Utilities"
> >     author "Greg Ward"
> >     author_email "gward@python.net"
> >     url "http://www.python.org/sigs/distutils-sig/"
> >
> >     packages ['distutils', 'distutils/command']
> >   }
>
> If you have #name(arg) do the same thing as #name=(arg), how
> does one get access to the instance variable?

That isn't too hard to implement.

def variable(*args)
  @variable = args.first unless args.empty?
  @variable
end

Now we can be even more like Smalltalk!

Seriously, though, I think a Hash would both make more sense there (if
I understand correctly what it's doing) and be more Ruby-like than
hacking the setter syntax in a block. Though I guess maybe people don't
like typing equals signs. I don't know.