On Thu, Apr 3, 2008 at 7:55 PM, _why <why / ruby-lang.org> wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 04, 2008 at 07:31:49AM +0900, Luis Lavena wrote:
>  > How this new RUBY_ENGINE will affect developers? Will ENGINE affect
>  > the generated bytecode in case of the compiler, or it will be
>  > evaluated at runtime every time it gets executed (like conditionals).
>  >
>  > Actually, what we are trying to track here?
>
>  I'd guess it's akin to a browser's User-Agent header.  For sniffers
>  and statisticians alike.
>

Mmn, I highly doubt that is the real reason behind it... but maybe (as
usual) I'm wrong :-P

RubyGems workaround issues related to Zlib using defined? Rubinius,
and use RUBY_ENGINE to default location of gems across on the
implementations.

So, how other implementations workaround this?

Example: currently lot of projects that provide versions for JRuby do
regexp on RUBY_PLATFORM looking for java (Mongrel, Hpricot, and
others).

Speaking of JRuby, it doesn't change when running on Linux, OSX or
Windows... so, what will be the purpose of RUBY_ENGINE then?

I don't know about IronRuby... how it will "advertise" its platform...

-- 
Luis Lavena
Multimedia systems
-
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from
the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent
disinclination to do so.
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