From: ptkwt@... (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2005-08-06T16:31:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Remote require

In article <42F44817.4050207@neurogami.com>,
James Britt  <james_b@neurogami.com> wrote:
>Assume there is actual code underneath (probably involving open-uri), 
>and that I've got soul.rb, and I'm superbad.com
>
># File soul.rb lives on a remote Web server
>$:.push( 'http://www.superbad.com' )
>
>require 'soul' # Fetch from server if not found locally
>
>
>Has anyone already implemented something like (I expect why_ to speak up 
>here)?
>
>I should probably use hack 'require' to use open-uri, and play around, 
>but it's late and just wanted to toss this out.
>
>What are the less-obvious issues with this way of fetching code?  Let's 
>assume crypto code signing and authentication and the like.
>
>
>James
>

Did something like this long ago in TaskMaster (Warning: I haven't 
touched that code in years and as far as I know it doesn't work in 1.8.x).  
Wasn't a webserver, but a drb server.  Sent the code over via drb as I 
recall.  

One issue to consider (which I did not solve) is the issue of extensions 
- you should probably send the C code over (or C++ if that's what you're 
using) and compile it on the machine doing the require in case it has a 
different processor/OS (as opposed to sending the .so file).  It would be 
cool if remote require worked with extensions as well.

We could really use something like this packaged up seperately in a 
library/module - [I would recommend not using the code from TaskMaster as 
an example it was written early on in my Ruby career and that was also 
prior to the existence of open-uri.]

Phil