Unixoid tools in Ruby?

[Josef 'Jupp' Schugt]

Hi!

The discussion on a Ruby oriented Linux is limited to init scripts in
Ruby, Ruby scripts to compile software from source and the like.

I think that much more people would benefit from Ruby tools that at
least emulate but preferably extend Unix tools. This would e.g. allow
Windows users to use such tools without having to install MKS toolkit
or Cygwin. I think this would be a 'killer application' for Ruby.

Design guidelines should be:

- Whenever feasible in terms of performace use plain Ruby. Only if
absolutely unavoidable use a C extension that still is portable
but requires compilation.

- Start with the minimum functionality of the original Unix command
and afterwards extend it to that of GNU tools or beyond.

Most complex task: Creating a Ruby shell close to a Unix shell. It
should start with the features of a true sh and then extend it to
something close to a zsh. zsh is better than the obvious choice bash
because it allows to use C style syntax for many control structures
without the disadvantages of csh or tcsh.

That's just my 0.02 EUR

Josef 'Jupp' Schugt

 

[Pierre-Charles David]

Hi!

The discussion on a Ruby oriented Linux is limited to init scripts in
Ruby, Ruby scripts to compile software from source and the like.

I think that much more people would benefit from Ruby tools that at
least emulate but preferably extend Unix tools.

The "Perl Power Tools" project does (did?) exactly this with Perl.
From their homepage (http://www.perl.com/language/ppt/):

"Welcome to the Unix Reconstruction Project. Our goal is quite
simply to reimplement the classic Unix command set in pure Perl,
and to have as much fun as we can doing so."