From: Jay Levitt <lists-ruby@...>
Date: 2007-10-30T09:55:02+09:00
Subject: Re: clarification of ruby libraries installation paths?

On Tue, 30 Oct 2007 08:35:29 +0900, Gonzalo Garramu�o wrote:

> I really don't think I would find much benefit in having gems be 
> available in apt-get.

Agreed.  I went through a really confusing experience a few months ago
trying to help a novice get the current Ruby and Rails on his new Ubuntu
laptop (I forget if it was Edgy or Feisty).  There were packages for Rails,
and there were gems for Rails, and it was hard to tell which he'd installed
and what was failing and why.

I ended up attempting to uninstall all the packages and install Ruby from
source, but even -that- didn't work properly - something wasn't happy about
zlib, even after downloading and installing zlib itself from source.  I
think I finally figured out that something about Ubuntu made the Ruby
Makefile skip building zlib locally.

Anyway, point is, it was very confusing, both for him and me, to have to
distinguish between apt-get-installed gemlike things and actual gems.  If
you want to make gems visible through apt-get, do a simple wrapper package
that does "gem install", but please don't duplicate (and thus fall behind)
the gem repository!

-- 
Jay Levitt                |
Boston, MA                | My character doesn't like it when they
Faster: jay at jay dot fm | cry or shout or hit.
http://www.jay.fm         | - Kristoffer