# Can platform agnosticism be achieved?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [May 15, 2008, 12:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649 "2008-05-15T00:35:49Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 12:35am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/1 "2008-05-15T00:35:49Z")

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Hello List,

I’ve been asking myself this question for quite some time, as Windows  
user  
need to break the rules and do things that don’t work out of the box  
with Ruby.

I know Ruby has it’s root in posix and \*nix OS, where things like  
drive letters don’t exist and full power is just four letters away  
(sudo).

Since last year, I’ve decided to spend more time helping great OSS  
Ruby  
projects to Windows users, and in doing so, I review, check and edit  
a lot of projects on rubyforge, github and other esoteric places.

The thing is I’m a bit annoyed of adding regexp around things like  
sudo in Rakefiles. Yeah, it’s annoying, 4 letters ends up adding 20  
bytes  
more just to avoid typing sudo in front of the rake command  
you’re calling.

Take as example the following gem install rake tasks (from DataMapper  
and Merb dev):

namespace :gems do  
desc ‘Uninstall all RubyGems for this project’  
task :wipe do  
sudo = RUBY\_PLATFORM =~ /win32|cygwin/ ? ‘’ : ‘sudo’  
sh “#{sudo} gem uninstall #{project} --all --ignore-dependencies  
–executables; true”  
end  
end

You see a big condition for sudo there. Take out of the consideration  
that the regexp don’t cover mingw as valid platform, or even don’t  
consider mswin64 (build of ruby 1.9 with VC9 for 64bits).

So, that regexp will become obsolete with time, at least for  
Windows…  
and the Windows folks will be required to patch it every time.

What about remove sudo from there and leave up to the user to make  
that  
decision? One example:

User perform some apt-get (ubuntu) tasks that requires sudo. He enters  
his password to confirm the operation.  
Under the same session, a few minutes later, he fires a rake task that  
uses sudo, by mistake or because is not clearly advertised what It  
does, he ends up messing with his gem repository, removing gems maybe  
he  
is using for other projects.

So, these rake tasks are doing more than they should, taking  
privileges out of user hand and automating them, hiding the problem  
when looking answer to “what happened?”.

Or maybe I’m wrong, someone will say shut up or a flame war will get  
started…

For the time being, those Windows user that don’t want to patch a lot  
of rakefiles that: 1) ignores platforms like mingw and java under  
Windows (dunno how to get that), or 2) clearly ignores sudo is not  
usable under windows.

> type sudo.bat

@ECHO OFF  
REM  
REM Fake sudo for Windows  
REM This help avoid tools that forces usage of ‘sudo’ on all the  
REM platforms, not just _nix ones.  
REM  
REM Save this file as ‘sudo.bat’ and place it somewhere in your PATH  
REM (ruby/bin is a good place too).  
REM  
CALL %_

Regards,

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 12:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/2 "2008-05-15T00:51:01Z")

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Luis L. wrote:

> Take as example the following gem install rake tasks (from  
> DataMapper and Merb dev):
> 
> namespace :gems do  
> desc ‘Uninstall all RubyGems for this project’  
> task :wipe do  
> sudo = RUBY\_PLATFORM =~ /win32|cygwin/ ? ‘’ : ‘sudo’  
> sh “#{sudo} gem uninstall #{project} --all --ignore-dependencies  
> –executables; true”  
> end  
> end
> 
> What about remove sudo from there and leave up to the user  
> to make that decision?

IMO you’re right. (When I used Fedora I didn’t have ‘sudo’ at all.)

How to gain root priviledge is the user’s own business. I may install  
Ruby in my home directory, where I have write access to everything.  
Putting ‘sudo’ thingies in Makefiles seems very wrong to me. Everybody  
knows that when you install a unix program you do ‘sudo make install’ or  
‘su -c “make install”’ _yourself_. It’s _not_ in the Makefile.

It might be that these programmers originated form the Windows culture.  
Maybe they believe most of their users too are Linux novices, that don’t  
know about ‘permissions’, so they foolishly do ‘sudo’ for them.

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 1:49am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/3 "2008-05-15T01:49:34Z")

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Honestly I can’t see the point in writing sudo in a Rakefile either:

tmacedo@bolos ~ $ uname -a  
Linux bolos 2.6.23-gentoo-r3 #3 SMP Thu Dec 6 17:20:18 WET 2007 i686  
Intel(R) Pentium(R) M processor 1.20GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux  
tmacedo@bolos ~ $ sudo

- -bash: sudo: command not found  
tmacedo@bolos ~ $

Tiago M.

Albert S. wrote:  
| Luis L. wrote:  
|\> Take as example the following gem install rake tasks (from  
|\> DataMapper and Merb dev):  
|\>  
|\> namespace :gems do  
|\> desc ‘Uninstall all RubyGems for this project’  
|\> task :wipe do  
|\> sudo = RUBY\_PLATFORM =~ /win32|cygwin/ ? ‘’ : ‘sudo’  
|\> sh “#{sudo} gem uninstall #{project} --all --ignore-dependencies  
|\> --executables; true”  
|\> end  
|\> end  
|\>  
|\>  
|\> What about remove sudo from there and leave up to the user  
|\> to make that decision?  
|  
| IMO you’re right. (When I used Fedora I didn’t have ‘sudo’ at all.)  
|  
| How to gain root priviledge is the user’s own business. I may install  
| Ruby in my home directory, where I have write access to everything.  
| Putting ‘sudo’ thingies in Makefiles seems very wrong to me. Everybody  
| knows that when you install a unix program you do ‘sudo make install’ or  
| ‘su -c “make install”’ _yourself_. It’s _not_ in the Makefile.  
|  
| It might be that these programmers originated form the Windows culture.  
| Maybe they believe most of their users too are Linux novices, that don’t  
| know about ‘permissions’, so they foolishly do ‘sudo’ for them.  
|  
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=ccpW  
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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 2:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/4 "2008-05-15T02:22:53Z")

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Luis L. wrote:  
| User perform some apt-get (ubuntu) tasks that requires sudo. He enters  
| his password to confirm the operation.  
| Under the same session, a few minutes later, he fires a rake task that  
| uses sudo, by mistake or because is not clearly advertised what It  
| does, he ends up messing with his gem repository, removing gems maybe  
| he  
| is using for other projects.  
|  
| So, these rake tasks are doing more than they should, taking  
| privileges out of user hand and automating them, hiding the problem  
| when looking answer to “what happened?”.

In short: Merb is a security risk (as any other script that uses such a  
technique). You should log a bug.

Everybody else: Proceed with caution.

And no, that it is OSS, is _not_ an excuse. See the OpenSSL bruhaha in  
Debian and Ubuntu at the moment.

* * *

Phillip G.  
Twitter: [twitter.com/cynicalryan](http://twitter.com/cynicalryan)  
Blog: [http://justarubyist.blogspot.com](http://justarubyist.blogspot.com)

~ - You know you’ve been hacking too long when…  
…the message `New mail in /usr/spool/mail/foo’ becomes an NMI.  
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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 3:25am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/5 "2008-05-15T03:25:40Z")

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ara.t.howard wrote:

> Albert S. wrote:
> 
> > Everybody knows that when you install a unix program you do ‘sudo  
> > make install’ or ‘su -c “make install”’ _yourself_. It’s _not_ in the Makefile.
> 
> no, you should _never_ do this. you should always do  
> […]  
> make  
> sudo make instal

(Yes, I didn’t mean one should compile under root (except the exceptions  
you mentioned).)

> this is a key point, because programs like gems do all three.

Ah, I didn’t consider this.

I’m a very newbie, certainly regarding gem, so, everybody, take my words  
with salt 🙂 (however you say that in English).

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 2:42am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/6 "2008-05-15T02:42:46Z")

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On May 14, 2008, at 4:51 PM, Albert S. wrote:

> How to gain root priviledge is the user’s own business. I may install  
> Ruby in my home directory, where I have write access to everything.  
> Putting ‘sudo’ thingies in Makefiles seems very wrong to me. Everybody  
> knows that when you install a unix program you do ‘sudo make  
> install’ or  
> ‘su -c “make install”’ _yourself_. It’s _not_ in the Makefile.

no, you should _never_ do this. you should always do

./configure --prefix=prefix  
make  
sudo make install

although it’s perhaps what you meant. this is a key point, because  
programs like gems do all three. if you were required to type

sudo gem install

then certain things will not work (yes i know that you currently are  
required to do so) because gcc, ld, and other programs will silently  
behave differently when run as root, sometimes ignoring certain  
environment variables. the inverse is also true - you cannot make a  
setuid binary as a regular user. things like se-linux make this even  
more confusing and then there are programs which need to be compiled  
and owned by a certain user, like www, but which can only be written  
into system space as root.

in short i really think the issue is windows not playing nice with  
everyone else and that projects like msys, which shim the windows os  
to be mostly posix compliant are the answer. consider that msys  
addresses not only the sudo issue but the ar one, the gcc one, the ld  
one, the bison one, the sh one, etc, etc, etc.

for years i’ve personally always considered msys a requirement for any  
windows/ruby development, along side a hand compiled ruby, precisely  
because it gives not only ruby, but the tools ruby and it’s programs  
require to operate at full speed.

that said any script which uses sudo should at _least_ do

SUDO = ENV[‘SUDO’]

so users can turn it off or possibly do some sort of test like

SUDO = system(‘sudo ls’) ? ‘sudo’ : ‘’

etc.

anyhow, i feel your pain but think sudo the tip of a posix iceberg  
more cleanly addressed outside of ruby.

cheers.

a @ [http://codeforpeople.com/](http://codeforpeople.com/)

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**Author:** ![luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/l/0ea827/32.png) [@luislavena](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/luislavena)\
**Post date:** [May 15, 2008, 4:00am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/can-platform-agnosticism-be-achieved/137649/7 "2008-05-15T04:00:42Z")

</div>

On May 14, 9:42 pm, “ara.t.howard” [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> everyone else and that projects like msys, which shim the windows os  
> to be mostly posix compliant are the answer. consider that msys  
> addresses not only the sudo issue but the ar one, the gcc one, the ld  
> one, the bison one, the sh one, etc, etc, etc.

Hmmn, are you talking about MSYS?

$ uname -a  
MINGW32\_NT-5.1 KEORE 1.0.11(0.46/3/2) 2007-07-29 17:16 i686 Msys

Luis@KEORE ~  
$ sudo  
sh: sudo: command not found

> SUDO = system(‘sudo ls’) ? ‘sudo’ : ‘’
> 
> etc.
> 
> anyhow, i feel your pain but think sudo the tip of a posix iceberg  
> more cleanly addressed outside of ruby.

Yes, and you can add that sudo is not even there for other Linux or  
\*nix implementations, like Tiago exposed too.

I think is user responsibility, again.

Regards,