Re: RubyGems in Ruby HEAD

On 9/21/05, TRANS <[e-mail]> wrote:
> Damn Austin, why don't you can it and answer my RubyGem question then?
> I still haven't gotten any answers --for months!

1. I am *not* a RubyGems developer.
2. I have no clue what your question is.
3. I don't recall seeing it on the rubygems-developers list.
4. The people who *are* developing RubyGems are, like me, way
   overstretched. I *really* don't see any of these Debian FUDders
   stepping up to the plate with a cross-platform solution. Mauricio was
   closest with RPA, but that was abandoned perhaps because there
   *wasn't* enough support from other developers.

> Moreover I use Debian and thank all those people that worked so hard
> to make apt-get so frig'n nice. I don't care what YOU think about
> DEBIAN. Suite youself, but don't sit here and bad mouth others who do.

If I thought they actually did a good job and had something nice, I'd
thank them. As it stands now, I avoid using Debian as much as possible,
primarily because of repackaging nonsense.

> At least they care enough to express their concerns --even if
> imprefect.

...but, by and large, they haven't expressed their concerns in concrete
ways that can actually help solve things. Seriously. Paul said "it'd be
better to use Package or even port dist-utils." That doesn't solve
*squat*, thank you very much. If Paul wants a better RubyGems that works
better with Debian and still works very well with other platforms that
aren't as philosophically constrained, why doesn't *he* port dist-utils
from Python to Ruby? That's concrete. That's practical.

As I said, I am *really* impressed with what Chris wants to do with
Package, but it's *still vapourware*. People can kvetch all they want
about how RubyGems doesn't work with their pet packaging system, but I
haven't seen any patches or concrete proposals submitted to the RubyGems
team to make it work better. I haven't even seen any progress on
"competing efforts". You know what that means? All of the kvetching is
worthless FUD.

> I can only hope they have enough sense to ignore your ranting. Do you
> really want to alienate Debian repackagers?

I don't particularly care whether Debian repackagers like me or not. I
do note that when a FreeBSD ports developer wanted to solve the problem,
he wrote code to do so and participated on the RubyGems developers list.
I *think* he even provided patches and patch suggestions. Have the
Debian repackagers that are whinging now done that? Not so far as I've
seen.

I talk to the RubyGems developers often. I'm not going to speak for
them, but I know that some of them aren't exactly happy with the very
existence of this thread -- because it's simply FUD without constructive
input. As opposed to Why's post on the RubyGems developer list which
said "what do we need to do to make this happen better"?

Aredridel provided something concrete. Have you? Have the Debian
repackagers?

> Do you really think that's going to help Ruby? What will we tell
> people? "Sure Ruby's easy to install... unless you use Debian, Ubuntu,
> Mepis, Libranet, Xandros, DamnSmall, etc. etc. Then you'll have to
> compile from source." Please. The Debian base is a big group, and
> while we shouldn't sacrifice Ruby goodness for it, at the same time
> there's no reason to sacrifice Debian goodness when there certainly no
> need to do so.

You mean there's Debian goodness out there? I sure as hell have never
seen it when I've been forced to use Debian. At any rate, the FUD so far
*has* been about "sacrificing Ruby goodness." This is why I'm just a
little more than derisive about the FUD.

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * [e-mail]
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