Since I’ve been trying out the ruby way to package Software I was also interested in how easy it is to include a command line accessible bin file with the gem, and since the hostip ruby gem actually works really well I decided to include a script to access the functions from the command line. All that is to do to make that work is adding a bin directory to your gem and adding
bindir = ‘bin’
executables = [‘BINNAME’]
to your Gem specification.
If you update the gem to Version 0.2.0 it will also install a tool called hostip in your system path, which is /usr/bin on MacOSX by default for ruby gems, to get your current Internet routable IP as well as the city, country, and geo-location for that or any specified IP.
I actually use it quite often now to check if my proxy works etc. which is way faster from the command line than doing it by visiting a website like hostip or those millions other that offer that service.
Again for more info how it is made to work visit the gem on BitBucket.
Code from the sideline 