Packaging: Ruby and shoes writing and reading txt files

Question

I'm new to ruby ... and shoes... and programming but here is my prob:

I made a timer which puts the timed amount into a txt file as a log. It also keeps an all time running total in a separate txt file. It works as I want it to...

I tried packaging it: If I package the rb file it doesn't work, it will only work if I package the entire folder including the txt files.

This working copy seems to operate without txt files (they are somehow built-in. Is there a way to package this so I still have access to the associated txt files. (maybe has something to do with the paths...)

thanks.

Answer 1

Shoes Packager behaviour is sometimes ugly. I think you're using windows, so i'll try to explain what seems to happen:

You have a bundled Shoes-App (a standalone .exe file). Every Time you start it by double clicking, it will extract itself in a new temp dir (located under c:\tmp\tempFileDirectory). So, it is a NEW temporary Directory, everytime!

The current path also is set to this tmp directory, which also includes the txt files you bundled into the app, in it's original state. If you change the content of the files during the app execution, and restart the app, your changes are gone, because in the new created tmp dir, there is a fresh copy of the original txt files. so far, it is a BAD idea to put your data files (txt in your case, or SQLITE-database-files, or config files, ...) into the bundles app.

Better way: create a "hidden" folder (folder's name should start with an ".") in the user's home folder. On windows it should be something like "c:\Users\YourName". Create there everything you need, this directory won't be temporal, so you can access it everytime without problems. This should general be a better solution when programming desktop stuff, not just while using shoes.