Mr Bones
by Tim Pease http://codeforpeople.rubyforge.org/bones
Mr Bones is a handy tool that builds a skeleton for your new Ruby projects. The skeleton contains some starter code and a collection of rake tasks to ease the management and deployment of your source code. Mr Bones is not viral – all the code your project needs is included in the skeleton (no gem dependency required).
Mr Bones provides the following rake tasks:
ann # Alias to ann:announcement ann:announcement # Create an announcement file ann:email # Send an email announcement bones:debug # Show the PROJ open struct clean # Remove any temporary products. clobber # Remove any generated file. doc # Alias to doc:rdoc doc:rdoc # Build the rdoc HTML Files doc:release # Publish RDoc to RubyForge doc:rerdoc # Force a rebuild of the RDOC files doc:ri # Generate ri locally for testing gem # Alias to gem:package gem:cleanup # Cleanup the gem gem:debug # Show information about the gem gem:install # Install the gem gem:package # Build all the packages gem:reinstall # Reinstall the gem gem:release # Package and upload to RubyForge gem:repackage # Force a rebuild of the package files gem:spec # Write the gemspec gem:uninstall # Uninstall the gem git:create_tag # Create a new tag in the Git repository git:show_tags # Show tags from the Git repository notes # Enumerate all annotations notes:fixme # Enumerate all FIXME annotations notes:optimize # Enumerate all OPTIMIZE annotations notes:todo # Enumerate all TODO annotations spec # Alias to spec:run spec:rcov # Run all specs with RCov spec:run # Run all specs with basic output spec:specdoc # Run all specs with text output spec:verify # Verify that rcov coverage is at least 90.0% svn:create_tag # Create a new tag in the SVN repository svn:show_tags # Show tags from the SVN repository test # Alias to test:run test:rcov # Run rcov on the unit tests test:run # Run tests for run
The rake tasks in the Mr Bones framework can be found in the “tasks” directory. Add your own tasks there when you need more functionality.
To create a new “Get Fuzzy” project:
bones create get_fuzzy
If you ever get confused about what Mr Bones can do:
bones --help
Mr Bones does not have any “requirements”, but if you do not have the following gems installed you will not get all that Mr Bones has to offer.
-
rubyforge - for easy gem publishing to rubyforge.org
-
rcov - for code coverage testing
-
rspec - if that’s the way you roll
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facets - for pretty colors
Actually, you will need at least version 1.2.0 of rubygems installed to use Mr Bones.
-
sudo gem install bones
The bones
command line tool is used to create a skeleton for a Ruby project. In that skeleton is a “tasks” directory that contains the Mr Bones rake files. These files are quite generic, and their functionality is controlled by options configured in the top-level Rakefile. Take a look at the Rakefile for the Mr Bones gem itself:
begin require 'bones' Bones.setup rescue LoadError load 'tasks/setup.rb' end ensure_in_path 'lib' require 'bones' task :default => 'spec:run' PROJ.name = 'bones' PROJ.authors = 'Tim Pease' PROJ.email = '[email protected]' PROJ.url = 'http://codeforpeople.rubyforge.org/bones' PROJ.version = Bones::VERSION PROJ.rubyforge.name = 'codeforpeople' PROJ.rdoc.remote_dir = 'bones' PROJ.rdoc.exclude << '^data' PROJ.notes.exclude = %w(^README\.txt$ ^data/) PROJ.svn.path = 'bones' PROJ.spec_opts << '--color' # EOF
The PROJ
constant is an open struct that contains all the configuration options for the project. The open struct is created in the “tasks/setup.rb” file, and that is also where all the configurable options are defined. Take a look in the “setup.rb” file to see what options are available, but always make your changes in the Rakefile itself.
The Mr Bones rake system is based on a “Manifest.txt” file that contains a list of all the files that will be used in the project. If a file does not appear in the manifest, it will not be included in the gem. Use the manifest
rake tasks to create and update the manifest as needed.
You can exclude files from being seen by the manifest – the files are invisible to the Mr Bones rake tasks. You would do this for any subversion directories, backup files, or anything else you don’t want gumming up the works. The files to exclude are given as an array of regular expression patterns; a file is excluded if it matches any of the patterns.
PROJ.exclude = %w(tmp$ bak$ ~$ CVS \.svn ^pkg ^doc) PROJ.exclude << '^tags$'
If your project depends on other gems, use the depend_on
command in your Rakefile to declare the dependency. If you do not specify a version, the most current version number for the installed gem is used.
depend_on 'logging' depend_on 'rake', '0.8.2'
Freezing allows you to define your own project skeleton to instantiate with Mr Bones when you create a new project. The default Mr Bones project skeleton is copied to the “.mrbones” directory in your home directory. From there, the skeleton can be modified however you like (add new files and tasks, add new directories, etc).
bones freeze
Typical uses of this feature would be to fill in user specific data like the author, e-mail address, etc. You can also add more default code to the skeleton project or your own “.rake” task files.
You can have multiple skeletons with different names. Your projects can be instantiated from any of these skeletons. Just supply a name when freezing:
bones freeze foo
You can instantiate a project from the “foo” skeleton:
bones create --skeleton foo get_fuzzy
The default skeleton name is “data”. If no skeleton name is provided, then this is the skeleton that will be used.
Unfreezing a skeleton will remove your customized project skeleton from the “.mrbones” directory. The default Mr Bones project skeleton will be used instead. A copy of your custom skeleton is stored in an archive directory of the “.mrbones” directory before it is removed.
bones unfreeze
You can unfreeze named skeletons, too:
bones unfreeze foo
You can instantiate a new project from a git or svn repository. For example, if you would like to use the “bort” rails template from github, you can type in the following:
bones create --repository git://github.com/fudgestudios/bort.git foo
Typing in the full path to the repository each time is tedious. You can create an alias by freezing the repository and giving it an easy to remember name.
bones freeze --repository git://github.com/fudgestudios/bort.git bort
This does not checkout a copy of the repository; it give us an easy to use alias when we want to create a new proejct based on the repository. The following command will use our new alias to instantiate a new project called “foo”:
bones create --skeleton bort foo
If the repository contains ‘.bns’ files they will be filtered through the ERb templating system. All the custom modifications described in the next section apply to repository based skeletons as well.
Mr Bones will perform a limited set of substitutions on the files in the skeleton when it generates a new project. ERB is used to insert the project name and the derived class name into template files. The file must end in an “.bns” suffix for ERB substitutions to take place. The “.bns” suffix is stripped from the file during project generation.
Only two values can be substituted into files using ERB – the project name and the derived class name.
<%= name %> <%= classname %>
The project name
is passed in from the command line and used “as is” (with the exception that spaces are converted to underscores). The classname
is generated by camel casing the project name where the underscores occur.
get fuzzy => GetFuzzy foo_bar => FooBar
Finally, file names can be modified by substituting in the project name. If a file name contains the string “NAME” it is replaced with the project name. If our project is call “get fuzzy” then the following transformations will take place.
NAME.rb => get_fuzzy.rb test_NAME.rb => test_get_fuzzy.rb NAME_spec.rb => get_fuzzy_spec.rb
Ryan Davis and Eric Hodel and their Hoe gem (from which much of the Mr Bones rake tasks have been stolen). The rails team and their source annotation extractor. Bruce Williams for help in coming up with the project name. Ara T. Howard for letting me squat in the codeforpeople rubyforge project.
MIT License Copyright © 2007 - 2008
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, sub-license, 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.
Version 2.0.0 of Mr Bones introduces backwards incompatibilities. Here is what you need to update in order for your current projects to work with this latest release.
Perform an update the tasks in your project directory:
bones -u your/project/directory
The following .rake files have been renamed in Mr Bones 2.0.0 (the old name is on the left and the new name is on the right). You will need to delete the old version and use only the new version.
doc.rake => rdoc.rake annotations.rake => notes.rake
The PROJ openstruct has been amended to contain a collection of nested openstructs. This will affect any settings you might have in the top-level Rakefile for your project. Here is the translation key (old names on the left and new names on the right).
rubyforge_name => rubyforge.name specs => spec.files spec_opts => spec.opts tests => test.files test_file => test.file test_opts => test.opts rcov_dir => rcov.dir rcov_opts => rcov.opts rcov_threshold => rcov.threshold rcov_threshold_exact => rcov.threshold_exact rdoc_opts => rdoc.opts rdoc_include => rdoc.include rdoc_exclude => rdoc.exclude rdoc_main => rdoc.main rdoc_dir => rdoc.dir rdoc_remote_dir => rdoc.remote_dir dependencies => gem.dependencies executables => gem.executables extensions => gem.extensions files => gem.files need_tar => gem.need_tar need_zip => gem.need_zip post_install_message => gem.extras['post_install_message'] annotation_exclude => notes.exclude annotation_extensions => notes.extensions annotation_tags => notes.tags svn => svn.path svn_root => svn.root svn_trunk => svn.trunk svn_tags => svn.tags svn_branches => svn.branches ann_file => ann.file ann_text => ann.text ann_paragraphs => ann.paragraphs ann_email => ann.email
And of course, each name should be prepended with PROJ in your Rakefile.
With my Mr Bones projects, I found myself constantly updating the tasks as new versions of Mr Bones were released. This quickly became annoying. Why not use the tasks from the Mr Bones gem and only copy those tasks to my own projects when they are packaged and released? That is the goal of this release of Mr Bones.
Version 2.1.0 of Mr Bones allows your projects to use the rake tasks found in the Mr Bones gem but still remain independent from Mr Bones when deployed. This is accomplished by copying the rake tasks into your project only when it is packaged into a gem (or zip file or tarball).
You still have the option of copy the tasks to your local project when it is created. Or you can add tasks to your project at a later time.
So, if you have an exsiting project and you want to use the Mr Bones tasks, simply delete your “tasks” folder and put the following at the top of your Rakefile:
begin require 'bones' Bones.setup rescue LoadError load 'tasks/setup.rb' # this line should already be there end