Feature request: corollary to `sh` that captures stdout

[jasonkarns]

It seems a common occurrence for me to have custom tasks that need to invoke a shell command, and capture the output.

The "simple" solution is to use backticks or %x to capture the command's stderr/stdout. However, using that isn't safe or recommended. Further, it loses all the helpful verbose and noop capabities that rake's own sh provides.

What do others do in this situation? Would it be helpful to have a version of sh that captures stderr and stdout? (Or to upgrade sh such that the resulting response object has stderr and stdout?)

Any other alternatives I'm missing?