From: Daniel Berger <djberg96@...>
Date: 2006-12-10T02:31:40+09:00
Subject: Re: autotest broken on winxp?

David Vallner wrote:
> Jeff wrote:
>> I haven't tried autotest on windows for a long time, but I thought it
>> worked back then.  Now, I get this error:
>>
>> C:\dev\row>autotest
>> c:/program
>> files/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/ZenTest-3.4.2/lib/autotest.rb:294:in
>> `expand_path': couldn't find HOME environment -- expanding
>> `~/.autotest' (ArgumentError)
>>         from c:/program
> 
> Do you have the HOME environment variable set?
> 
> From ri File.expand_path:
> 
> The given pathname may start with a ``+~+'', which expands to the
> process owner's home directory (the environment variable +HOME+ must be
> set correctly). ``+~+_user_'' expands to the named user's home directory.
> 
> This is arguably a bug in File.expand_path rather than ZenTest. (On
> Windows systems, a fallback to ENV['HOME'] should be ENV['HOMEDRIVE'] +
> ENV['HOMEPATH']. Wonder where you report those.

This has been discussed before.  See http://tinyurl.com/y52hs3, among 
others.

The fundamental issue is that "~" is a shell thing, not an OS thing.  To 
me, the bug is that File.expand_path accepts '~' at all.  But, things 
are what they are.  Come to think of it, I could add support for this in 
win32-file. :)

In practice I never use '~'.  I mostly use ENV['HOME'] || 
ENV['USERPROFILE'].

Regards,

Dan