From: Patrick Gundlach <clr8.10.randomuser@...>
Date: 2006-02-09T22:43:23+09:00
Subject: Re: distributing native and ruby version of a library

Hi Phil (and David),


[...]

> How about in your rb/mylib.rb file you do something like:
>
>   begin
>     require 'ext/mylib_base' 
>   rescue
>     require 'lib/mylib_base'
>   end
>
> Where ext/mylib_base would be the shared lib created from the C file and 
> lib/mylib_base would be the Ruby implementation.
>
> The user of mylib just does:
>
>   require 'mylib'
>
> ...and it's all transparent to the user whether or not the C version or the 
> ruby version is used.


OK, that makes sense. Thanks. I wonder if this could be combined with
the setup.rb from RAA (<http://raa.ruby-lang.org/project/setup/3.2.4>

When I run 

ruby setup.rb config

setup.rb tries to create the c-extension in ext/mylib/... but this
might fail if the user doesn't have the necessary libraries installed.
Is there a way in setup.rb to say 'keep going if you can't create the
c extension'? I mean as a configuration file or alike, not as a
parameter passed to setup.rb. This way the c-extension will installed
only if available.

Patrick