From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2001-09-23T11:42:24+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:21568] ANN: Ruby Win32 Library

Well, it's not complete yet, but there are a few useful things in it so 
I'm announcing it now.

You can download it from: http://www.aracnet.com/~ptkwt/win32ext.tar

There is a pre-built shared lib included: Win32.so - but I've found that 
if I move to a different version of Ruby that sometimes it needs to be 
rebuilt.  Best to run ruby extconf.rb and then make.



Here's the README.txt file:
Ruby Win32 library

What is it?
The ultimate goal of the Ruby Win32 library is to build a 
hierarchical library similar in function and structure to 
Perl's Win32 libraries.  Everything here is released under the same
license as Ruby.

It is organized as follows:

Win32 - toplevel module which contains some functions and constants
   Process - a class defined under Win32 which allows for OO creation and
   manipulation of processes.

   (more to come)

How do I use it?
   Process usage example:
   require "win32process"
   myProcess = Win32::Process.new("c:\\Windows\\notepad.exe","notepad 
tmp.txt",TRUE,Win32::CREATE_NEW_PRODUCT_GROUP,".")
   #check the process id:
   puts myProcess.pid
   #wait 1 second:
   myProcess.wait(1000)
   #kill the process:
   myProcess.kill(exitCode) #where exitcode is an integer 

Win32 module functions:

   InWinNT? - returns true if running on Win(NT|2K)
   InWin98? - returns true if running on Win(95|98) (and probably ME)
   GetOSVersion - returns a hash composed of the elements of the
      OSVERSIONINFO struct.  Keys are: "MajorVer","MinorVer","BuildNum",
      "PlatformID"
Win32 constants:
Several constants from winbase.h are made available to the Ruby side.
They are accessable with a Win32:: prefix, like: Win32::INFINITE, 
Win32::CREATE_PROCESS_GROUP

Process class methods:
   Process.timedSystemCommand(command, redirFile=nil, time=100)
      where:
      'command' is a string containing the command to run
      'redirFile' is a string containing a filename to redirect
          STDOUT of the process.
      'time' is a FixNum indicating the number of seconds to wait 
          before the process is terminated.

   Process.new - see usage example above
  
Process instance methods:   
   
   wait(time) - where time is in miliseconds
   kill(exitcode) - where exitcode is a FixNum indicating the exitcode
   [in the future I'll add suspend and resume methods as well]

Building:

run: ruby extconf.rb
     make

NOTE: there is not currently a 'make install' so you'll have to either
      manually put the Win32.so in your local directory, or you'll have
      to copy it to your ruby/site-library for now.

#end of README.txt

I'm probably going to be working on converting Perl's Win32::GuiTest 
module over to Ruby as the next, but I'm open to requests.

Phil