From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2005-07-22T22:40:15+09:00
Subject: Re: Are there packages?

On Jul 22, 2005, at 7:48 AM, Brian Candler wrote:

> Note 3: if you want to run the programs in bin/ without first  
> installing
> their libraries you can do so, but you'll need to update the  
> $LOAD_PATH
> appropriately. This can be done by hand:
>
>   cd bin
>   ruby -I../lib my_program.rb
>
> or in the outer directory:
>
>   ruby -Ilib bin/my_program.rb

It's often desirable to add both directories to the path, especially  
with testing (Test Suites load Test Cases probably in the same  
directory).  The -I option can handle this too:

ruby -I lib:test test/ts_all.rb

> If anybody has a simpler solution than this, I'd be interested to  
> see it.

I used to muck with $: as you showed, then I discovered the wonderful  
world of Rake.  Most of the tasks will just do the right thing.  For  
example, here's the equivalent of my test example above:

require "rake/testtask"

task :default => [:test]

Rake::TestTask.new do |test|
     test.libs << "test"    # "lib" is already in there
     test.test_files = [ "test/ts_all.rb" ]
     test.verbose = true
end

I guess that looks a little verbose, but with the above running my  
tests is as simple as:

$ rake

And Rake is handy for SO much more.  I've gotten into the habit of  
making a task for everything.  I have tasks that generated a  
project's documentation with RDoc, then move it up to Rubyforge for me.

It took me maybe 30 minutes to get comfortable with Rake and I  
haven't mucked with $: since.  (When I'm building my own tasks I use - 
I all:the:directories:i:need, as shown above.) I think it was time  
well spent.

Hope that helps.

James Edward Gray II