[Rant] Extending sys?

[Kevin Burge]

Stefan,

You said:

Doesn't wget.exe live in a directory listed in the PATH
environment variable? If it does, the definition of wget
could simply look like:

    def wget(src)
        sh "wget", src.to_s
    end

Long answer:
Part of the goal of this project is to allow that the user has nothing 
"as expected" except ruby and maybe rant.  As it stands, we build so 
many different projects, and the user's machine varies so widely as to 
what might get in the way, I completely obliterate the environment on 
start up, and I go "fetch" from the web cache the tools that are needed 
to accomplish whatever task is required (and these tools have to be 
versioned, i.e. java 1.4 and java 1.5, even java 1.3 unfortunately).  
This requires being able to execute the tools from the "local cache" 
which the user does get to define. 

Yes, we could generate a setup that has the tools we need, but then 
we'll need a new tool eventually for something, and that'd require 
everyone to install... or say, we find a problem with cvsnt.exe we're 
using.  I can "push out" a new one just by updating the project.yaml 
file for cvsnt with a new version and deploy it to the "web cache".  
Maven, from what I understand, works out the dependencies without the 
user having to download a bunch of stuff themselves. I like this, 
especially since it gives the rant developer total control of the build 
environment.

Short answer:
No, we don't know if wget.exe (or it's required dlls) live on the PATH.  
User's (developers) environments have caused too many problems for me 
(us). (Many times I had something build or run just fine on my machine, 
but would fail in five different ways on other's machines due to 
misconfiguration, tool differences, things in the path ahead of other 
things, etc.).

if Env.on_windows?
  safe_vars = %w(
    ALLUSERSPROFILE APPDATA CLIENTNAME CommonProgramFiles COMPUTERNAME 
ComSpec
    HOME HOMEDRIVE HOMEPATH LOGONSERVER NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS OS
    PATHEXT PROCESSOR_ARCHITECTURE PROCESSOR_IDENTIFIER PROCESSOR_LEVEL
    PROCESSOR_REVISION ProgramFiles PROMPT SESSIONNAME SystemDrive
    SystemRoot USERDOMAIN USERNAME USERPROFILE windir
  )

  ENV.keys.each do |var|
    ENV[var] = nil unless safe_vars.include?(var)
  end

  ENV['PATH'] = 
"#{ENV['SystemRoot']}\\system32;#{ENV['SystemRoot']};#{ENV['SystemRoot']}\\System32\\Wbem"

  #fix $LOAD_PATH
else
  $stderr.puts "set up for unix"
end

Thanks for the info on sh, sp, escape, and lamba.  Definitely makes the 
code cleaner!

Kevin


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