From: Alex Gutteridge <alexg@...>
Date: 2007-01-16T10:53:08+09:00
Subject: Building extensions with Hoe

Hi,

I'm developing a library that includes a C extension, so during  
development I need to keep re-compiling the extension before testing.

I'm using Hoe for packaging, so I've added the following task to my  
Rakefile.rb which allows me to rebuild the extension using extconf.rb/ 
make. My library has a further dependency on an external C library  
(libR), at the moment this is semi-hardcoded into the script by  
referencing the environment variable R_HOME:

desc "Uses extconf.rb and make to build the extension"
task :build_extension do
   Dir.chdir('ext')
   system("ruby extconf.rb --with-R-dir=$R_HOME")
   system("make")
   Dir.chdir('..')
end

Two questions (I'm pretty new with Rake/Hoe so forgive me if these  
are obvious):

1. The 'build_extension' task works fine, but seems a little hacky,  
how do other people build extensions with Rake/Hoe?

2. Can I retrospectively add this task as a dependency of the 'test'  
task, so that when I run my tests I can ensure the library is freshly  
built?

Alex Gutteridge

Bioinformatics Center
Kyoto University