From: Eric MSP Veith <eveith@...>
Date: 2010-11-09T01:45:30+09:00
Subject: Using Ruby's C API safely and sanely

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Hello Rubyists!

I'm trying to integrate Ruby (both for bindings and embedded interpreter) 
into a larger project, namely RPM 5. I'm facing several diffuclties there 
and hope that somebody might point out a more elegant way of solving things.

First, querying Ruby's compile-time configuration is rather painful. RPM 5 
uses Autoconf, and using extconf.rb as yet another layer of configuration 
seems not the best way. Currently, we're using calls to "ruby -rrbconfig -e 
puts CONFIG::expand ..." to get information like CFLAGS/include directories, 
location of Ruby's library directories, and so on. Is there a better way to 
do this? Sadly, Ruby doesn't come with a .pc file or something similar, and 
a call like Perl's "perl -V:..." doesn't seem to be implemented, either?

Second, including the ruby.h file leads to the inclusion of Ruby's config.h 
file. This is clearly not appreciated, as we need to cope with a lot of 
HAVE_FOO_H defines, or even Ruby's PACKAGE_NAME, etc. definitions which of 
course override RPM's. Is there a sane way of using Ruby's C API, i.e. 
including the Ruby header file, without having Ruby wreak havok on our own 
defines?

Thanks alot in advance. Every hint is greatly appreciated.

			Eric
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