To require "sketchup.rb", or not to ... that is the question

[DanRathbun]

@Aerilius

The requirement is probably meant as marker statement and not a literal requirement of the little bits that this file currently contains.

And I disagreed in the other thread. Write your comments to mean what they should mean. Most especially if it is a example or tutorial that is going to teach the knowledgeable.

I always teach what I learned from the Ruby docs and the Pick-Axe book…

Require only what you need. (Requirements are listed by YARD and other documentation generators.)

@Aerilius

How else would you suggest to “mark” scripts so that they need a special environment?

How about:

exit unless $0 == "SketchUp"

I actually used this form in a plugin that I did not want to run in DoubleCAD Ruby (although I don’t think I ever released it into the wild.) DoubleCAD had implemented (badly,) a clone of the SketchUp API, so it also had a Sketchup module defined.

EDIT: Another couple might be:

exit unless defined?(Sketchup) == "constant"

or

raise(NotImplementedError,"Runs in SketchUp Ruby ONLY!") unless defined?(Sketchup)

@Aerilius

Also if the Ruby API was implemented as a "sketchup.rb" that loads a C extension, would it be better?

IF …this is a hypothetical situation that does not exist.

Do we teach new coders based upon possible future scenarios ? … or what exists now ?

@Aerilius

But SketchUp Ruby scripts/plugins/extensions still require a special embedded Ruby that provides these API classes. If one attempts to run them outside, they should fail (at load time and not somewhen late at runtime.)[/quote]
My first retort would be why ever run them outside of SketchUp Ruby ?

Bu then you had an answer …

[quote=“Aerilius, post:2, topic:11365”]I sometimes drop in alternative SU API implementations (mocks) for ease of testing in the system ruby interpreter, where a "sketchup.rb" requirement makes sense again.

But this is YOUR workflow!

We don’t tell the whole world to mimic you, if they do not have that same workflow.

Besides, I find it more likely that a mock API would be loaded via the command line, or a "load 'api'" statement typed into the IRB shell.

That is what I would do. I’d set up the “outside” Ruby environment to be exactly like the internal one, just after SketchUp startup. And in that “mock up” the “sketchup.rb” file should be the very same, and implement the same functions as it does in the internal environment.

In conclusion, because you (and maybe others,) are using this statement as a “marker” and in a way that it was never intended,… does not mean we should tell everyone else to put meaningless statement in all their files.

You don’t have to comply nor agree, because you have a workflow that uses the statements in two ways.

But I am a purist. I respect ya’ Andreas, but I must disagree with ya’.

IF, in the future, there does happen some external Ruby API, that runs outside of SketchUp,… then it isn’t SketchUp,… and it shouldn’t be named “sketchup”.

It should have it’s own name, like “skpapi” or whatever.