Add #instance_exec to exclusions

[trans]

Ruby 1.8.7 now has #instance_exec so that should be excluded as well.

[masover]

You're right.

Unfortunately, I "officially" passed this on to JackDanger, as I don't currently have a use for it or much interest in maintaining it. If you want to fork it, go ahead.

You could also trivially hack around this in your own code with:

class Foo < BlankSlate
  reveal :instance_exec
  # ...
end

[trans]

Is he maintaining it? Your repo is the master repo (and has the issues tab).

I've been thinking about forking it and re-releasing it as basic_object, putting a condition wrapper around it for checking if BasicObject exists. This gem has been useful to me for providing BasicObject support to Ruby 1.8.x.

[masover]

I don't know if he is, but you could ask.

As I don't have a gem, and I no longer have any reason to implement things on 1.8, I've got no problem with you forking it.

It is odd that he doesn't have an 'issues' tab.

[kschiess]

BasicObject and BlankSlate are by no means the same thing, @trans. BasicObject is hardcorer...

[trans]

"no means"? How about "most, but not all, means"? I'm aware of differences. (AFAIK) BlankSlate is as close as one can get to BasicObject in Ruby 1.8, and it generally works as a drop in substitute --I have use it in multiple projects to that end.

[kschiess]

Most of the time I use it, it cannot be replaced with BasicObject. That is exactly why I pressed for 1.9 compat of BlankSlate. And yes. I meant no means, perhaps understandably given my first sentence here. (Why is it that with programmers, things that you say lightly in daily life always become such weight? Give me some slack, man. I will help you with keeping BlankSlate alive, isn't that enough?)

[trans]

Probably b/c programs have to be so exact or they go all wonky on us ;-) But point taken. I only meant to say that, while they aren't exactly alike, they largely serve the same purpose. In fact, I believe BasicObject was born b/c people were using classes like BlankSlate.

In my case I am using BlankSlate as a substitute for BasicObject, not the other way around, so maybe that is the difference we experience? On the other hand, I would think you should be able to use BasicObject, there is just a few things you might have to watch out for, e.g. you might need to define const_missing and delegate to Object. You might also need to define some methods BlankSlate doesn't eliminate but BasicObject does.

But rather than speculate, what issues do you specifically run into?

[kschiess]

thanks for the slack ;)

You're basically dead on. BasicObject does too little, there is practically nothing left. So you always have to figure out what to add back in, something I find exhausting. For my DSL purposes, BlankSlate was perfect.

PS: I might just bookmark this thread, so I remember from your post above what to add back in ;)

[kschiess]

the 1.9 thing was basically fixed (2f31ad4) in May, so I am using this blankslate right here in my projects. Let's just keep it alive for those who do use it, thanks okay bye ;) Reminds me of _why's metaid.rb... Too small to deserve to live? ;)

[kschiess]

I hereby offer to maintain it, in the case it absolutely must be moved somewhere.

[trans]

My thought wasn't to kill it, but rather:

# basic_object.rb
require 'blankslate'
unless defined?(BasicObject)
  class BasicObject < BlankSlate
  end
end

Also, metaid.rb lives, sort of. It was incorporated into Ruby Facets.

[kschiess]

BasicObject = BlankSlate 

even? I agree, but I am the wrong person to get to agree.

[masover]

Hmm. I'm not really the right person either...

I do agree that "BasicObject = BlankSlate" is probably the right way to write that patch.

For what it's worth, I think there's another issue with BasicObject -- if I recall, we still have this weird bit where methods can only be rebound to subclasses. That means if I want any methods from Object in BasicObject, I either have to proxy them to a real object with method_missing, or rewrite them from scratch.

By contrast, BlankSlate has a #reveal somewhere.

I haven't run into this at all, though. I've only used it as a replacement for BasicObject, and I've used BasicObject when I have 1.9 available.

So, suggestions: Either we need a new gem name (and basic_object probably isn't the best), or we need to get jackdanger to take over (including the issue tracker somehow), or I can ask him to give me permissions to deploy the 'blankslate' gem on rubygems.org. What do you think?

[meh]

I actually prefer using BlankSlate to avoid constant lookup issues, so please do add instance_exec.