Everyday Scripting utilities at Rubyforge
Everyday Scripting with Ruby comes with a library, anachronistically called s4t-utils. It’s mainly used behind the scenes to simplify working with scripts, but it also has a pile of utilities I use frequently.
By putting s4t-utils in a script’s third-party folder, a script writer can hand out her script as a single zip file and not force people to install different bits and pieces. (Rubygems handles collecting and installing multiple bits, but (1) using gems would require my scripters to make gems, and (2) they’d also have to run a local gem server for their local gems.)
However, if you’re making gems anyway (like I’m doing these days), s4t-utils might as well be another gem your gem depends on. So s4t-utils is now available from Rubyforge and thus via gem install --remote s4t-utils.
This version has a few small additions. It also has documentation of the general-purpose utilities.