# \[SOC\] mkrf 0.1.1 released **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [August 17, 2006, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soc-mkrf-0-1-1-released/65400 "2006-08-17T22:57:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![kdclark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/k/ba9def/32.png) [@kdclark](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/kdclark)\ **Post date:** [August 17, 2006, 10:57pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/soc-mkrf-0-1-1-released/65400/1 "2006-08-17T22:57:23Z")
Today I tagged mkrf’s 0.1.1 release. It fixes several of the shortcomings of it’s predecessor. = What Is It? mkrf is a library to generate Rakefiles which build extensions to Ruby. It aims to replace mkmf with a properly tested, cleanly coded, easy to use (and reuse) alternative. = Changes The most obvious change is that the Mkrf::Generator constructor now takes the name of the library without a file extension. The generator will now figure out what file extension makes sense on the build system. The second change development-wise is that you can now inject your own code into the generated Rakefile as a string set in the additional\_code attribute. Yes this smells. I’m not very happy with it at the moment either but it seemed the simplest clean way to allow for things like gem specs. If you have a better way to implement this, by all means, tell me about it and we’ll make it better together. Another change that I’d been avoiding a while is adding proper logging. Initially it uglied up my code a bit, but after some refactoring I’m mostly satisfied. mkrf.log will now tell you all about it’s quest to find the libraries and headers on your system. The logger is set to the “info” severity level by default, but you can tweak it easily: Mkrf::Generator.new(‘somelib’) do |g| g.logger.level = Logger::WARN end On my (quickly growing) list of things to do is a proper writeup on using mkrf for you extensions. I expect that if you’re familiar with mkmf it shouldn’t be hard to wrap your brain around it.