I am happily deleting code in the Rake project! Rake provided a Sys module that allowed easy access to command line-like file commands (such as copying files, creating symlinks, etc). I’ve just discovered the FileUtils module in Ruby 1.8 and it covers 90% of what the Sys module provides. FileUtils also uses a better naming scheme than Sys; FileUtils names mimic Unix command line programs so they are easier to remember and use. Sys.run and Sys.ruby aren’t represented in FileUtils, so I will provide some kind of replacement for them.

If anyone has a heartache over losing Sys, I’ll provide an optional Sys module in a contrib directory. But for now, Sys is being deprecated.

I just love it when I can delete code!