From: Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@...>
Date: 2006-04-16T17:22:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Typeout during RubyGems Install

On Sat, Apr 15, 2006 at 08:48:43PM +0900, Bil Kleb wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> The NASA Open Source Agreement,
> 
>  http://opensource.org/licenses/nasa1.3.php
> 
> that I'm being required to use, has a clause (3f) about at
> least making an attempt to have the user register.
> 
> Is there a way to at least get a typeout during gem install?

It is possible to abuse the support for building extensions in order
to show a message (or do anything else for the matter), by placing
arbitrary code in an extconf.rb file and creating a bogus Makefile (just
so that RubyGems sees it and doesn't report an error)[1]. The code you
place in extconf.rb will often be run with euid=root. 

[1] this assumes that make (or nmake on mswin builds) is available unless you
change ENV["make"]; otherwise, you could (ab)use the Rake support for the same
ends.

-- 
Mauricio Fernandez  -   http://eigenclass.org   -  singular Ruby