Ruby 1.8.5: cannot use rdoc/usage from a gem executable

ruby-talk
1

Hello,

In Ruby 1.8.5, RDoc::usage_no_exit parses usage information from the
earliest file in the Kernel#caller list. This works well if you directly
invoke the file containing the usage information.

However, when a Ruby program (containing usage information in the same
file) is shipped as part of the Gem::Specification#executables array,
RubyGems creates a proxy for that program in the system bin/ directory.
Because of the proxy, the Ruby program is not invoked directly, and
therefore RDoc::usage_no_exit is parsing the usage information of the proxy!

The way I've solved it, for now, is to define a RDoc::usage_from_file
method that parses usage information from a given file, as follows.

$ diff -bc lib/rdoc/usage.rb{.orig,}
*** lib/rdoc/usage.rb.orig 2006-08-28 23:39:39.000000000 -0700
- --- lib/rdoc/usage.rb 2006-08-28 23:41:41.000000000 -0700

···

***************
*** 97,103 ****
    # Display usage
    def RDoc.usage_no_exit(*args)
      main_program_file = caller[-1].sub(/:\d+$/, '')
! comment = File.open(main_program_file) do |file|
        find_comment(file)
      end

- --- 97,108 ----
    # Display usage
    def RDoc.usage_no_exit(*args)
      main_program_file = caller[-1].sub(/:\d+$/, '')
! usage_from_file(main_program_file)
! end
!
! # Display usage from the given file
! def RDoc.usage_from_file(input_file, *args)
! comment = File.open(input_file) do |file|
        find_comment(file)
      end

Does anyone have other ideas or solutions? Is it too brash to suggest that
such functionality be added to RDoc?

Thanks for your consideration.