mkrf – making C extensions for Ruby a bit easier
mkrf
is a library for generating Rakefiles to build Ruby
extension modules written in C. It is intended as a replacement for
mkrf
. The major difference between the two is that
mkrf
builds you a Rakefile instead of a Makefile.
Major goals of mkrf include
-
easy code reuse of its
Availability
class and -
simple, well documented, use of the
Generator
class.
Basic Usage
mkrf
works similarly to mkmf
in that a user
writes an extension configuration file and then runs it, generating a
Rakefile
in the current directory.
With mkmf it was customary to name the extension configuration file
“extconf.rb
”. With mkrf, you should name this file
“mkrf_conf.rb
”.
In general, mkrf_conf.rb
should be placed in the root
directory of the extension (ex.
PROJECT_ROOT/ext/name_of_module
) and it expects, by
default, that files to be compiled have a .c
extension and
reside in that same directory. If your project contains multiple extension
modules, then each one would get its own subdirectory under
PROJECT_ROOT/ext/
and each would have its own
mkrf_conf.rb
file.
The most basic usage looks like the following, where the name of the extension module being built is “libtrivial”:
require 'mkrf'
Mkrf::Generator.new('libtrivial')
Extra arguments may be passed to the Rakefile generator in a block:
Mkrf::Generator.new('libtrivial') do |g|
g.logger.level = Logger::WARN
g.include_library('z')
end
Another example:
Mkrf::Generator.new('libxml') do |g|
g.include_library('socket','socket')
g.include_header('libxml/xmlversion.h',
'/opt/include/libxml2',
'/usr/local/include/libxml2',
'/usr/include/libxml2')
end
Helpers
mkrf also comes with rakehelper.rb
– a module which contains
methods you may want to use in your project's top-level Rakefile. The
docs on using rakehelper do not exist at the moment, but for the time
being, have a look at examples/trivial/Rakefile
to get an idea
of how they're used.
Credits
-
Jim Weirich for writing Rake
Licence
mkrf is available under an MIT-style license.
Copyright © 2006 Kevin Clark
Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.