How to Distribute a Ruby Script via Homebrew

how to distribute a ruby script via homebrew

There are two issues with your script:

The first one is you try to require some file relatively to the current directory; i.e. the one from which the script is run, not the one it’s located in. That issue can be fixed by using Ruby’s require_relative:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require_relative './lib/libfile1.rb'
puts "came here"

The second issue is the script assumes the lib/ directory is located in its directory; which it’s not because your formula installs the script under <prefix>/bin/ and the library files under <prefix>/lib/. Homebrew has a helper for that use-case called Pathname#write_exec_script. It lets you install everything you need under one single directory, then create an executable under bin/ that calls your script.

Your formula now looks like this:

class Foo < Formula
  desc "A command line tool"
  url "https://github.com/foo/foo/archive/master.zip"
  version "5.0.1"

  def install
    libexec.install Dir["*"]
    bin.write_exec_script (libexec/"foo")
  end
end

It installs everything under libexec/ (lib/ is usually reserved for lib files), then add an executable under bin/ that calls your libexec/foo script.

Creating a Homebrew formula for standalone application

You can either modify your script at install time to use the correct location of the resource or just assume it’s in the same directory and let Homebrew do the magic for you. I wrote an example formula for the latter case in another answer.

Here’s how it looks like for your needs:

class Foo < Formula
  desc "Blah blah"
  url "https://github.com/foo/foo/archive/master.zip"
  version "1.2.3"

  def install
    man1.install "myapp.1"
    libexec.install Dir["*"]
    bin.write_exec_script (libexec/"myapp.py")
  end
end

It installs myapp.1 in the correct directory. You can also use man2, man3, etc for other man directories.

It then installs all the remaining files under libexec then create an exec script in bin/myapp.py. This will be a simple shell script that execs your script in libexec. That way, your script will executes from libexec and thus will be able to find resource.txt that’s located in the same directory.

If you’d like to call it myapp and not myapp.py it’d look like that:

  def install
    man1.install "myapp.1"
    libexec.install "resource.txt"
    libexec.install "myapp.py" => "myapp"
    bin.write_exec_script (libexec/"myapp")
  end

How to create homebrew formula with only scripts

There are two cases here:

Standalone Scripts

Install them under bin using bin.install. You can optionally rename them, e.g. to strip the extension:

class MyFormula < Formula
  # ...

  def install
    # move 'myscript.sh' under #{prefix}/bin/
    bin.install "myscript.sh"

    # OR move 'myscript.sh' to #{prefix}/bin/mybettername
    bin.install "myscript.sh" => "mybettername"

    # OR move *.sh under bin/
    bin.install Dir["*.sh"]
  end
end

Scripts with Support Files

This case is tricky because you need to get all the paths right. The simplest way is to install everything under #{libexec}/ then write exec scripts under #{bin}/. That’s a very common pattern in Homebrew formulae.

class MyFormula < Formula
  # ...

  def install
    # Move everything under #{libexec}/
    libexec.install Dir["*"]

    # Then write executables under #{bin}/
    bin.write_exec_script (libexec/"myscript.sh")
  end
end

Given a tarball (or a git repo) that contains the following content:

• script.sh
• supportfile.txt

The above formula will create the following hierarchy:

#{prefix}/
  libexec/
    script.sh
    supportfile.txt
  bin/
    script.sh

Homebrew creates that #{prefix}/bin/script.sh with the following content:

#!/bin/bash
exec "#{libexec}/script.sh" "$@"

This means that your script can expect to have a support file in its own directory while not polluting bin/ and not making any assumption regarding the install path (e.g. you don’t need to use things like ../libexec/supportfile.txt in your script).

See this answer of mine for an example with a Ruby script and that one for an example with manpages.

Note Homebrew also have other helpers to e.g. not only write an exec script but also set environment variables or execute a .jar.

Installing Ruby with Homebrew

in ~/.bash_profile add the following line

export PATH=/usr/local/Cellar/ruby/1.9.3-p194/bin:$PATH

When you're done, close your terminal and re-open it. You should be fine.

Alternatively, you can execute the follwing in each open shell instead of closing/re-opening:

source ~/.bash_profile

Note:
I highly recommend installing ruby via rvm or rbenv so you can manage multiple ruby versions and use gemsets.

Java Homebrew installation

I encountered this error. The fix is to run the command sudo chown -R $USER:admin /usr/local/* as described on the Tech Stacker blog post that solves this issue.

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