From: dusty <dusty.doris@...>
Date: 2008-12-14T16:01:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Command line utilities in rubygems?

On Dec 14, 12:57 am, Ch Ba <navo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>  I have a small project that I'm working on and I would like the
> executable to be put in the usr bin path and setup so that it can be
> used as a command line utility automatically when installed using gem
> install. How would I go about setting it up that way? I've been trying
> to access the rubygems reference but it seems to be down.
> --
> Posted viahttp://www.ruby-forum.com/.

You can simply add it to the Rakefile.  Here is an example Rakefile
for a gem.

require 'rubygems'
Gem::manage_gems
require 'rake/gempackagetask'

spec = Gem::Specification.new do |s|
  s.name = "some_gem"
  s.version = "0.0.1"
  s.author = "The Author"
  s.email = "author@email.com"
  s.homepage = "http://www.author.com"
  s.platform = Gem::Platform::RUBY
  s.summary = "Some Gem"
  s.files = FileList["{bin,tests,lib}/**/*"].to_a
  s.require_path = "lib"
  s.autorequire = "some_gem"
  s.has_rdoc = true
  s.extra_rdoc_files = ["README.txt"]
  s.executables = ['the_executable']
  s.add_dependency('dep1')
  s.add_dependency('dep2')
end

Rake::GemPackageTask.new(spec) do |pkg|
  pkg.need_tar = true
end

The part that says s.executables lists the files that will be
installed into the path.  In this case, its calling the file named
the_executable, which would be in the bin subdirectory of the gem.

So, my directory structure would be

$ ls
README.txt	bin/		pkg/
Rakefile	lib/		test/

$ ls bin/
the_executable*

$ ls lib/
some_gem.rb

$ ls test/
test_some_gem.rb

Then to package it up, run rake gem.  It will create a directory
called pkg, and place the gem in there.

Hope that is helpful.

Dusty Doris