From: James Britt <ruby@...>
Date: 2005-10-11T01:53:37+09:00
Subject: Re: gems is a language change, not a pkging system

Sean E. Russell wrote:
...

> 
> I haven't tried packaging recently; if RubyGems solves the firewall problem, 
> then I may re-evaluate Gems for some of my other projects.


Perhaps I'm misreading you, but you seem to prefer tarballs over gems 
because gems does not solve the firewall problem.  But neither does tar. 
  In fact, gems "solves" this problem the same way tar does: you make 
sure you download all the files you need before installing anything.

An issue is knowing just what "all the files you need" means; with gems, 
a package may just assume it can go fetch what it needs, so you may not 
know to download something until you try installing.  But the same is 
true for installing from a tarball.

In both cases I blame the packager for not making clear up front what 
all the required pieces are.


James