Can we add support for running generic Ruby scripts?

[ioquatix]

https://github.com/rubygems/rubygems/blob/451ac56078a3deaacef640906070d3d8f7502570/lib/rubygems/ext/builder.rb#L122-L138

Can we add /\.rb/ or something that matches scripts ending in .rb and just run them with the Ruby interpreter? The current behaviour is inflexible.

[simi]

I have seen extconf.rb used to generate Makefile to just run custom script. Something like https://stackoverflow.com/a/38912965/319233.

What is your usecase @ioquatix?

[jchestershopify]

I am not a fan. Install scripts are a recurring cause of security issues, particularly credential harvesting.

[ioquatix]

@jchestershopify I agree with you, but according to the current interface, that is already possible. The only solution to that would be to use a sandbox for building native extensions. Which, I think is probably a good idea, but would be a totally separate issue.

Assuming that we just create a makefile which invokes a Ruby script, that's not practically different from what I'm proposing here, just that it's a simplification and it's more explicit. Otherwise, as @simi said, I can just use a hack to execute the code.

My use case is to use custom build tools, i.e. code which doesn't use any of the existing mechanisms. To be frank, the fact we have things like cmake or cargo built in directly, seems very specific to a particular use case, and I'm not sure why those were acceptable, but what about nix or npm or other tool chains... it seems like we are creating a pretty big maintenance burden.

[simi]

@ioquatix what kind of build tools? cmake, make, cargo are used to build native extensions. Is it possible to build native extension using nix or npm? I would like to prevent easy way of coupling multiple package managers together.