This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Ruby Buzz by Eric Hodel. Original Post: Dear Lazyweb: Gem Platforms Feed Title: Segment7 Feed URL: http://blog.segment7.net/articles.rss Feed Description: Posts about and around Ruby, MetaRuby, ruby2c, ZenTest and work at The Robot Co-op. Latest Ruby Buzz Posts Latest Ruby Buzz Posts by Eric Hodel Latest Posts From Segment7

As you may or may not have heard, RubyGems will be merged into Ruby 1.9 sometime in October. Before this can happen RubyGems needs to automatically install dependencies based on platforms. Fortunately I’ve got the automatic install part written. Unfortunately I don’t know if I’ve got figuring out the platforms right. This is where you come in.

Dear Lazyweb,

Here’s my proposal for how we recognize platforms. From Config::CONFIG, take the target_os and run it through a case statement to figure out OS and OS version (if any). Combine the target_cpu, OS and OS version. This value is your platform.

(There will be a rubygems-platforms.gem much like sources.gem that can be updated as necessary.)

Using the tattle data, the following code recognizes 26 unique platforms:

def match(cpu, os)
  cpu = case cpu
        when /i\d86/ then 'x86'
        else cpu
        end

  os = case os
       when /cygwin/ then            [ 'cygwin',  nil ]
       when /darwin(\d+)?/ then      [ 'darwin',  $1  ]
       when /freebsd(\d+)/ then      [ 'freebsd', $1  ]
       when /^java([\d.]*)/ then     [ 'java',    $1  ]
       when /linux/ then             [ 'linux',   $1  ]
       when /mingw32/ then           [ 'mingw32', nil ]
       when /mswin32/ then           [ 'mswin32', nil ]
       when /openbsd(\d+.\d+)/ then  [ 'openbsd', $1  ]
       when /solaris(\d+\.\d+)/ then [ 'solaris', $1  ]
       else                          [ 'unknown', nil ]
       end

  [cpu, os].flatten.compact.join("-")
end

require 'rbconfig'

target_cpu = Config::CONFIG['target_cpu']
target_os = Config::CONFIG['target_os']

puts "Your target_cpu is:   #{target_cpu.inspect}" 
puts "Your target_os is:    #{target_os.inspect}" 
puts "Your platform is: #{match(target_cpu, target_os).inspect}"

Lazyweb, I have two major questions for you:

Did I get something wrong? Am I using autoconf’s target_os correctly? Is Solaris 2.8 really incompatible with Solaris 2.9? What is a 64-bit Windows’ target_os value?

Do I have all the platforms people run Ruby and RubyGems on? If the answer to this one is no, do this: gem install tattle; tattle. (Yes, AIX users, I’m talking to you.)