Re: clarification of ruby libraries installation paths?

On 10/22/07, Sam Roberts <[e-mail]> wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 01:55:29AM +0900, Austin Ziegler wrote:
>> On 10/22/07, Lucas Nussbaum <[e-mail]> wrote:
>>> On 23/10/07 at 00:13 +0900, Ben Bleything wrote:
>>>> On Mon, Oct 22, 2007, Lucas Nussbaum wrote:
>>>>> [snip]
>>>>> It would be great if a standardized and sensible installation
>>>>> could be figured out for ruby1.9.
>>>> This is all *entirely* up to the packagers on those systems.
>>>> They're the ones who have chosen to configure Ruby to install
>>>> libraries in what I agree is a totally insane fashion. If you
>>>> install Ruby from source on any of those platforms, you'll see sane
>>>> behavior.  It's the distro's problem, not Ruby's.
> $PREFIX defaults to /usr/local when you install ruby from source.  Is it
> then "sane" for packagers to install to /usr/local/?

./configure --prefix /usr

Please. $PREFIX *is* a configuration option. That's it.

>>> So, if everybody is insane expect the ruby developers, why don't
>>> they recommend a sensible behaviour that distros could follow?
>> They have.
>>
>>   $PREFIX/bin
>
>>   $PREFIX/lib/ruby/$VERSION
>>   $PREFIX/lib/ruby/site_ruby/$VERSION
>
> Two directories, 3 classes of libraries:
>
>   packaged libraries from ruby stlib
>   packaged 3rd party libraries
>   manually installed
>
> Which goes where?

Ultimately, I don't care -- you'll never see class 2 on a system I
install, because of poor packaging choices regarding Ruby with most of
the distros. On other systems, you'll never see class 3, because they
don't use anything BUT distro packages. (And that's what I'll use for
things I don't care about, like Python and Perl.)

If we want a ./configure --vendor option (which really doesn't have much
meaning for Ruby itself), ask for it. But that's *not* what was
originally asked for; what was originally complained about was stuff
that, frankly, Ruby doesn't have anything to do with and can't
influence.

> The various distros make different decisions here, in the absence of
> friendly guidance.

As well they should.

>>   $PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/$VERSION
>
> Two directories, 2 classes of libraries:
>
>   packaged gems
>   manually installed gems
>
> I guess they all go in one place?

Seeing as, at least on Debian, there isn't the first class of gems, yes.
Again: this is something to take up with the RubyGems folks, not on
ruby-core. You won't get a lot of luck there -- that's been raised this
past week and the answer has been "use GEM_PATH".

> Btw, for those wondering why anybody would be so perverse as to not
> want to install using gem, here's something to think about.

I don't actually think that at all. I just don't think that it's Ruby's
problem to solve, because *Ruby* doesn't have the three classes of
libraries and two classes of Gems. The distros in question do.

What will make it easier for you? A $VENDOR path? How will it work? What
will it *actually* do for you that the existing system won't do? Where's
the patch for discussion? Why is it being classified as a Ruby problem
when it clearly *isn't* a general case problem? It doesn't apply to
Solaris, AIX, HP-UX, Mac OS X, or Windows. It only applies to Linux
distributions who claim special status.

-austin
-- 
Austin Ziegler * [e-mail] * http://www.halostatue.ca/
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