chneukirchen / virtualrb

= virtualrb - Virtualize Ruby installations

Copyright (C) 2008  Christian Neukirchen <chneukirchen@gmail.com>
Licensed under the same terms as Ruby itself.

THIS IS ALPHA SOFTWARE THAT HAS NOT BEEN TESTED WELL---USE AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Idea inspired by Python's virtualenv: http://pypi.python.org/pypi/virtualenv


== Rationale

Do you want to play with Ruby libraries and gems, but don't want to
mess up your system installation?

Do you need to run several applications on the same system and want
full control over the installed versions?

Do you need to test your code under various setups?

Are you a user and want to install your own libraries and gems on a
shared server without having to hack around?

Then virtualrb is for you!  It creates a virtual Ruby installation
where you can tinker around without modifiying the system Ruby.


== Usage

  ruby virtualrb.rb ROOT
    to set up a new virtual Ruby in ROOT/bin/ruby

  ruby virtualrb.rb --with-ruby=/usr/bin/ruby-1.8.4 ROOT
    to set up a new virtual Ruby using the given interpreter
    (default: version that calls virtualrb.)

  ruby virtualrb.rb --with-rubygems ROOT
    to automatically set up a Rubygems installation as well (you need
    to have the rubygems-update gem installed.)

If you use a sh(1)-compatible shell, you can enter the virtualized setup with:
  source ROOT/bin/activate
and leave it again with
  deactivate

Or you just can run
   ROOT/bin/ruby script.rb
or
   ROOT/bin/irb


== What works

* Plain Ruby libraries.
* Ruby apps with correct she-bang line, pointing to the virtualized Ruby.
* Installing Rubygems, including building native extensions.


== What won't work

* Too clever (or too naive!) software.  Especially it must not install
  anything outside $site*dir.


== How it works

* We build a modified rbconfig.rb, a site.rb that sets $LOAD_PATH, and
  build a wrapper script for Ruby to always load that site.rb at the
  very beginning.


== To do

* Build scripts to automatically install software from source control.
* Dynamic relocation (no hard-coded paths).  Useful?