Launching System Processes From Rails

Question

I want users to upload pics and then have a background process that converts them to an animated gif. For right now I'd just like to fork a sys process and let a script do the processing.

Answer 1

Have a read of this article: 6 Ways to Run Shell Commands in Ruby

Pick one of those methods and use it in your controller.

If you want anything moderately complex (ie reading output from stderr) you'll need to use a gem - likely open4.