= Ratch -- Ruby-based Batch Scripts

  http://ratch.rubyforge.org


== Introduction

Ratch is Ruby-based DSL for building batch scripts. It's intent
is to ease the burdone a batch script writers, by supplementing
the standard ruby environamet to be more condusive the needs
of batch scripting.

In addition to using Ratch to write stand-alone batch scripts,
it makes a very powerful library for other applications that
require batch-like functionality. In general any program that
access the file system extensively could benifit from it's use.



== Installation

Standard installation procedure apply.

  $ gem install ratch

or manually

  $ tar -xzf ratch-1.0.0.tgz
  $ cd ratch-1.0.0
  $ setup-rb all



== Usage

To use for your own scripts, simply add a bang line.

  #!/usr/bin/env ratch

On Windows, of course, you will want to associate the .ratch extension
name to the ratch executable instead.

To use Ratch as a library, simply require 'ratch', and subclass.

  require 'ratch'

  class MyClass < Ratch::Service


  end

Ratch also provides a delegated service which automatically supplies
method_missing() to delegate to the given *context*. This is called
a Ratch Plugin.

  class MyClass < Ratch::Plugin

  end

  MyClass.new(context)

For details on all the functionality Ratch provides, please refer to
the API documentation.



== Development

You can use gitweb to browse the 'ratch' repository.

To pull the 'ratch' repository anonymously, use:

        git clone git://rubyforge.org/ratch.git
        

Developers: You can push to the 'ratch' repository using:

        gitosis@rubyforge.org:ratch.git
        


== Copying

Copyright (c) 2007, 2008 Tiger Ops & Thomas Sawyer

Ratch is licensed under the terms of the MIT license.