From: Paul Brannan <pbrannan@...>
Date: 2002-10-18T00:35:33+09:00
Subject: File.makedirs and permissions

In ftools.rb (Ruby 1.6.7) I see:

  def makedirs(*dirs)
    verbose = if dirs[-1].is_a? String then false else dirs.pop end
#    mode = if dirs[-1].is_a? Fixnum then dirs.pop else 0755 end
    mode = 0755
    for dir in dirs
      next if FileTest.directory? dir
      parent = dirname(dir)
      makedirs parent unless FileTest.directory? parent
      $stderr.print "mkdir ", dir, "\n" if verbose
      if basename(dir) != ""
        Dir.mkdir dir, mode
      end 
    end
  end

Looks like makedirs used to allow specifying the mode (since the code is
there but is commented-out), but it does not any more.  Does anyone know
why this was changed?  Will I be able to specify the mode in the future?

Is there an easy workaround for this with Ruby 1.6.7?  (Ruby 1.7 has
both ftools and fileutils, and fileutils's makedirs appears to not
explicitly set the mode).

BTW, what's the difference between fileutils and ftools?  Is ftools
deprecated?

Paul