From: Eric Hodel <drbrain@...7.net>
Date: 2006-08-25T08:06:15+09:00
Subject: Re: More ri-problems (ruby_1_8 branch again)

On Aug 24, 2006, at 7:21 AM, Kent Sibilev wrote:

> I agree the situation with ri is quite bad. Besides several apparent
> bugs that must be fixed, ri has a new feature where it collects
> information about a requested class from all installed gems. I
> understand the intention for this, but the implementation is not good
> enough.
>
> For example, when I want to see methods of class Array, ri shows me
> methods from builtin Array class plus methods added to Array by all
> gem authors. But it doesn't show me what gem a particular method comes
> from.

I'm working on it, but haven't figure out how to do it right yet.   
RDoc is a very large and complicated piece of software.

> This is wrong!!! Considering that no one can force gem authors
> to provide a complete rdoc for their libraries, in the result you have
> a mess.

The standard library's documentation is far from complete.  I've  
found I'll get equal quality from a random gem.  Hiding the problem  
won't entice people to fix the anything.  Adding some sunshine and  
some eyeballs might.

In practice mixing documentation from classes isn't a problem that  
creates confusion.  time.rb and time.c are mixed and complaints or  
confusion in the IRC channel are rare.

> Can I ask to make this feature optional and make --system option
> enabled by default, until the situation is resolved?

The feature is of too great a general use for it to be disabled for  
such a minor problem.

ri Rake::TestTask
ri ActiveRecord::Base
...

It is easy to only search particular documentation collections by  
default:

export RI='--system'

-- 
Eric Hodel - drbrain@segment7.net - http://blog.segment7.net
This implementation is HODEL-HASH-9600 compliant

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