After years of being away from Ruby, I'm back full-force and have just cut my first gem, which includes an executable. Everything works like a charm.
The problem I am facing, however, is that I ALSO have a startup script (not part of the gem istelf) that daemonizes the executable. Additionally, I'd also like for the startup script to point the executable at configuration in a place like /var/
To the best of my knowledge, there's no way with rubygems, gemspec, etc., to specify files getting blown out to other parts of your system during install (e.g. startup script to /etc/init.d, and config to /var/). It certainly wouldn't make sense if you COULD do that.
So... my question is... what IS the proper procedure for automating the installation of something like this. I'm using RHEL, and am wondering if it's, perhaps, time for me to get my feet wet with making my first RPM.
Any thoughts?
You can do it. However it is probably not quite the recommended approach. But yes it is possible to run arbitary code during gem installation using the extensions option.
From the RubyGems Manual:
Usage
spec.extensions << 'ext/rmagic/extconf.rb'
Notes
These files will be run when the gem is installed, causing the
C (or whatever) code to be compiled on the user’s machine.
Just place whatever ruby code you need into the extconf.rb (or equivalent) file.
Examples for building C-extensions from the RubyGems Guides:
http://guides.rubygems.org/c-extensions/
What's the best way to distribute a simple command-line Ruby app to clients in a way that would not require them to manually install Ruby and required Gems?
In my understanding this task boils down just to a couple of lines of SH/BAT code that does Ruby/Gems checks and if not found goes on with Ruby installation with RVM.
So do these lines of code exist already somewhere or will I need to write something on my own?
I've used this project for small scripts in the past, without any issues
http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/
It creates an EXE file out of your ruby script.
If you need something cross-platform, the BAT/sh option is probably best. You could grab RVM, have RVM install ruby, use bundler for your gems, and then launch the script.
The closest I've found is (I believe) releasy: https://github.com/Spooner/releasy
I failed to find any way of producing a Ruby cross platform installation.
I've created a RubyAnywhere script that tries to solve this task.
i've written several Ruby scripts that work together to from a console application.
These scripts are written on an Ubuntu platform, but I want to be able to run them from a Windows platform as well.
The problem I'm currently facing is porting over all the gems. I've downloaded sources of most gems and made some bug fixes on them, but is it possible to package them for example with my scripts so they're available?
I'm thinking a bit DLL like here as Windows does.
I can probably add a readme file, stating which gems are required and where/how to obtain them, but it would be easier if I could package them.
Maybe you could look at http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/index.html which does some packaging for ruby application (including the ruby interpreter, too)
You could also build a gem with your script in it along with all needed gems directly inside the gem. Provided their licences allow you to do that, it could be a reasonable solution ( Gem supports platform flavoured gems http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/20#platform )
How can I try CoffeeScript on Windows?
The installation instructions are only for *nix: http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/#installation
EDIT:
Since I asked this a while ago, many new answers have appeared. The number ( and quality ) of options for Windows users has been increased a lot. I "accepted" an answer a long time ago, then changed to other ( better ) answers as they came up, but I have now decided to not accept any answer, and let the community ( votes ) show which answers are best. Thanks to everyone for the input.
UPDATE: See my other answer to this question, How can I compile CoffeeScript from .NET? for a far more accurate and up-to-date list of the current options.
CoffeeScript-Compiler-for-Windows works well.
Maybe it was more complicated when this question was posted. But as of 2012, CoffeeScript is as easy to use on any platform. The instructions are the same for Windows, Mac, or Linux
Install Nodejs from http://nodejs.org/
Install CoffeeScript globally with the node package manager npm install -g coffeescript or locally npm install --save-dev coffeescript
Write a script in your favourite text editor. Save it, say as hello.coffee
Run your script coffee hello.coffee or compile it coffee -c hello.coffee (to hello.js)
Node.js runs on Cygwin these days, so that's probably your best bet with getting CoffeeScript running on Windows. I'd try that first.
If you have a different preferred JavaScript runtime, you can probably use the prebuilt-compiler (extras/coffee-script.js). For example, if you include that script on a webpage, you can call
CoffeeScript.compile(code);
... to get back the compiled JavaScript string.
UPDATE 2012-04-12: Cygwin is no longer needed to run Node on Windows. Microsoft
worked with Joyent through 2H 2011 to improve node's support for
Windows IOCP async IO. Node 0.6 was the first release of node to
natively support Windows.
You can run the CoffeeScript compiler under good old Window Script Host (cscript.exe), a standard component on Windows since Windows 98. Admittedly I tried this a while back and it didn't work, but I tried again recently and now all the standard CoffeeScript tests compile just fine.
A bit of plumbing code using a *.wsf file and coffee-script.js is all you need. My code is on GitHub: https://github.com/duncansmart/coffeescript-windows
I blogged about it here: http://blog.dotsmart.net/2011/06/20/the-simplest-way-to-compile-coffeescript-on-windows/
You can use jcoffeescript as a command-line solution.
It uses a Java-based javascript engine (Rhino) and wraps up the task of compiling coffee-script.js from the CoffeeScript project. This allows it to run the CoffeeScript compiler as a Java program.
The command to use (on Windows/Linux) looks like this:
java -jar jcoffeescript-1.0.jar < foo.coffee > foo.js
You will need to download & build the Java source code (use IntelliJ Community Edition to avoid downloading Ant) or a pre-built download for CoffeeScript v1.0.
I now use jcoffeescript in place of the Ruby solution (another answer here), because this allows me to keep up with the latest CoffeeScript version.
You can use a command-line version of CoffeeScript by installing Ruby on Windows and then installing the CoffeeScript Gem.
After that, the command-line is available, for example, 'coffee bla.coffee' - to compile your CoffeeScript code down to JavaScript code.
The only disadvantage doing it this way (not using Node.js) is that the Ruby version of CoffeeScript is restricted to version 0.3.2 - the last version written in Ruby before it was moved over to Node.js.
*However, I still use the Ruby version of CoffeeScript in my current employment and my personal web page and I don't see much of a problem as this version of CoffeeScript is quite mature and most of the features listed on the CoffeeScript website can be used.
*striked out this last statement which was correct at the time but is becoming more incorrect every few days; CoffeeScript has now advanced a long way since 0.3.2 and is past 1.1
There're already bunch of answers here, but let me add mine. I wrote a .NET library for compiling CoffeeScript on Windows.
As jashkenas suggested, I've used the pre-compiled extras/coffee-script.js file.
Together with the Jurassic JavaScript compiler I've wrapped it all up in a single library: CoffeeSharp
The library also ships with a commandline tool and a HttpHandler for ASP.NET web development.
I've used this one: https://bitbucket.org/maly/coffeescript-win/zealots
looks working well, althouth you need to manually need to update coffee.script from 0.95 to 1.0.1.
Since node.js is now ported to Windows, this is actually pretty easy:
http://www.colourcoding.net/blog/archive/2011/09/20/using-coffeescript-on-windows.aspx
If you want to use CoffeeScript in an ASP.NET application then you can use this HTTP handler to serve compiled CoffeeScript code.
I haven't tried this myself yet, but it seems to be an answer. (I've downloaded and installed but not used it yet.)
There's an add-in for Visual Studio 2010 that adds CoffeeScript editing to VS (among other things).
It's called Web Workbench and is downloaded as a vsix. (i.e. can be downloaded from within the VS UI.)
I'm only putting this in only as an answer to the more general implied question for "How can I try" tools that don't normally run on Windows or have yet to be ported. Use a virtual machine running a UNIX-like OS such as Linux or BSD.
Provided you have enough RAM and are willing to learn enough to get around, it will make trying open source software a lot easier. In the CoffeeScript case you can still do things like --watch on a shared folder and remain in Windows land most of the time. You also won't pollute your system with tools and services you try and don't buy into, which is handy if you do that a lot.
Consider using Chocolatey to install http://chocolatey.org/packages/CoffeeScript on Windows.
(Installing Chocolatey : https://github.com/chocolatey/chocolatey/wiki/Installation)
I would like to use open source tools if possible.
here are 2 links I found but haven't tried them -
http://pivots.pivotallabs.com/users/chad/blog/articles/471-continuous-integration-in-a-box-exploring-tsttcpw
http://laurentbois.com/category/continuous-integration/
Try this CruiseControl.rb
http://cruisecontrolrb.thoughtworks.com/
CruiseControl.rb is written in Ruby and designed for ruby.
Another one is Hudson, it is built in Java, but it has a plugin for ruby
https://hudson.dev.java.net/
Give Cinabox a try (I'm the author). It is intended to make this as simple as possible, and uses cruisecontrol.rb. There is a screencast and readme. If you have problems, open a ticket using the LightHouse link in the readme.
Good Luck!
There is a lightweight CI server written in Sinatra called Integrity which you might want to take a look at. I mainly used it because it supports git.
Git Reference