Download and write .tar.gz files without corruption

Question

How do you download files, specifically .zip and .tar.gz, with Ruby and write them to the disk?

_{—
This question was originally specific to a bug in MacRuby, b}

Answer 1

I'd recommend using open-uri in ruby's stdlib.

require 'open-uri'

open(out_file, 'w') do |out|
  out.write(open(url).read)
end

http://ruby-doc.org/stdlib/libdoc/open-uri/rdoc/classes/OpenURI/OpenRead.html#M000832

Make sure you look at the :progress_proc option to open as it looks like you want a progress hook.