From: "Vít Ondruch" <v.ondruch@...>
Date: 2011-11-02T07:25:48+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:40659] Re: Can rubygems save us from "binary-compatibility hell"?

Dne 1.11.2011 22:31, Eric Hodel napsal(a):
> On Nov 1, 2011, at 2:03 PM, V�t Ondruch wrote:
>> Dne 1.11.2011 0:05, Eric Hodel napsal(a):
>>> On Oct 31, 2011, at 2:41 PM, V�t Ondruch wrote:
>>>> Actually you have missed that there are Linux distros, which are repackaging the gems. I am speaking of Fedora and RHEL. It would cause a lot of troubles.
>>> What troubles?
>> Because you had to rebuild packaged gems after even the tiniest update of Ruby.
> I do not recall rebuilding my gems after updating between Ruby patch levels or even between versions in the 1.9 series, that is why the library version is 1.9.1.
>
> Have I forgotten needing to rebuild?  Can you show me a ticket where API broke?

No, this was not necessary for Ruby 1.9 and thats fine. However the 
Yusuke's proposal was the opposite, i.e. break ABI with every release 
and I am against it.

>> There is currently more then 200 gems in Fedora, so that is a lot of work to rebuild them. Even the smallest Rails stack counts almost 50 gems.
> This process should be automateable by Fedora and other Linux distributions.
>
> I don't think Ruby should restrict itself because repackagers have a manual process.
>
> If there is something Ruby can do to help Fedora, etc. automate packaging I think Ruby should do it.

Yes, there is one think Ruby can do and it is to preserve ABI for major 
versions, i.e. 1.8, 1.9 or 2.0.

And automated repackaging is dream as long as there is no authority 
which ensures at least some basic standards in gems. I am speaking 
namely about licenses, bundled libraries, failing unit tests etc.