[ANN] Preliminary Ruby Production Archive -- over 100 packages available

rpa-base 0.2.0 is now available at http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org . 
Many of the most popular libraries/applications as per Rubyforge
statistics (Rails, Rake, RedCloth, Active Record, SQLite, Log4R, Copland,
ruvi, to name a few) have been packaged for use with rpa-base 0.2.0.

Read on for the full list of packages currently available.

Foreword
--------

The Ruby Production Archive (RPA) will provide packages of Ruby
libraries and programs in a form that allows production use, engineered
through a stringent process resembling FreeBSD's or Debian's. 

rpa-base is a port/package manager designed to support RPA. Its scope and
purposes are different to those of other systems like RubyGems.

Repository status
-----------------

The packages available in the embryonic repository have not been subject to
the RPA QA process that has been defined as one of RPA's goals in the RPA
manifesto (http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.cgi?RpaManifesto).
Therefore, they might have bugs; many of them have been tested on
several systems, but the more obscure ones might have unnoticed bugs.
At any rate, rpa-base should guarantee that the system is not left
in a corrupted state (i.e. packages are either installed in full or
not installed at all). Some of the packages (such as Rails) have been
reviewed by the upstream developers too.
 
We would appreciate any feedback on rpa-base or the packages currently
provided. A mailing list has been set up for that purpose:
  http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rpa-base-testers


RPA needs your help
===================
RPA is an ambitious project in need for developers. These are some of the
areas that need to be worked on:
* packaging (new software and package maintenance) 
* setting up a permanent repository infrastructure
* cross-compilation and build automation
* website development (should provide package indexes, QA section,
  bugtracking, etc)

Please contact me at <[e-mail]> (adding RPA to the subject
will help get it past the spam filtering ;) or via IRC, batsman @
#ruby-lang on freenode.net if you have any interest or for any additional
information on RPA/rpa-base and their goals.



Packaged software as of 2004-08-06:
===================================

actionpack       0.7.8-1  A control-flow and template package for the VC part of MVC.
activerecord     0.9.2-1  Object-relation mapping put on rails.
aeditor            1.3-1  Editor intended to support pair-programming. 
aes              1.4.0-3  Implementation of the AES (rijndael) algorithm in pure Ruby.
amrita           1.0.2-1  An html/xhtml template library for Ruby which makes html documents
arrayfields      3.3.0-1  Provide keyword access to arrays.
aspectr          0.3.5-1  Simple aspect-oriented programming in Ruby.
bitset           0.6.2-1  BitSet Library for boolean operation
bloom            0.0.1-1  Quick and dirty implementation of a bloom filter.
bluecloth       0.0.3b-1  A Ruby implementation of Markdown, a text-to-HTML conversion tool
borges           1.1.0-1  Continuation-based web application framework
bsearch            1.5-1  Binary search library for Ruby.
cache            0.1.0-1  Simple cache library.
captcha          0.1.2-1  Completely Automatic Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart.
cast256            1.0-1  Pure Ruby implementation of the CAST 256 algorithm.
cgikit           1.2.1-1  A componented-oriented web application framework like Apple Computers WebObjects.
chun               0.2-1  File integrity checker like TripWire, Osiris, and Samhain
copland          0.4.0-1  Copland is an Inversion of Control (IoC) container for Ruby.
criteria          1.1a-1  Abstract queries to various data sets.
crosscase          0.2-1  Auto-generate aliases for under_barred and camelCase methods.
crypt-fog        0.1.0-1  A simple string obfuscator.
cstemplate       0.5.1-1  Fast, generic text templating engine for Ruby, written in C.
dbdbd            0.2.2-2  Library for reading and writing simple flat-text data files.
dict             0.9.2-1  Client-side library implementation of the DICT protocol (RFC 2229).
diff-lcs         1.0.2-1  LCS algorithm to compute differences between two enumerable containers
djb-netstrings   0.1.0-1  Pure Ruby implementation of the Netstrings protocol.
dpklib           1.0.6-2  Miscellaneous library, similar in spirit to amstd.
drbfire          0.1.0-1  DRb protocol for bidirectional communication through a firewall.
entrycache        1.01-1  A limited sized hash for use in caching systems.
example          0.0.1-1  A dummy package used to test RPA
extensions       0.3.0-1  Extensions to the Ruby standard classes.
extmath            2.3-1  extmath is a library that extends Ruby's built-in math library.
flattenx         0.1.0-1  Flatten arrays by any number of levels (unlike Array#flatten).
flexmock         0.0.3-1  Simple and Flexible Mock Objects for Testing
fsdb               0.4-1  Thread-safe, process-safe file system daba base.
fxruby          1.0.29-3  Ruby bindings for FOX.
gemfinder        1.9.6-1  Ruby class browser.
getopt-declare  1.09.7-1  Declaratively Expressed Command-Line Arguments via Regular Expressions.
gettext          0.6.1-1  Native Language Support Library and Tools modeled after GNU gettext.
gnucap             0.1-1  Gnucap-Ruby is a simple ruby binding to gnucap
goto               1.0-1  Simple label-based goto for ruby. Just to show that it can be done.
gurgitate-mail     1.3-1  An easy-to-use mail filter.
hashslice         1.03-1  Adds slicing to the builtin Hash class.
htmltokenizer      1.3-1  Treat a web page as a series of tokens.
ikko               0.1-1  Simple templating engine.
instiki          0.9.1-2  WikiClone running on WEBrick and Madeleine with several text formats.
interface        0.1.0-1  Java style interfaces for Ruby, including a fairly similar syntax. 
iowa              0.20-2  Web application framework for Ruby
iterator           0.8-1  Simple implementation of GoF iterator pattern.
jabber4r         0.6.0-1  Allow Ruby applications to talk to a Jabber IM system.
keyedlist        0.4.0-1  A Hash which automatically computes keys
kirbybase          1.6-1  A small, plain-text, DBMS, which can be used either embedded or client/server.
lafcadio         0.4.0-3  Lafcadio is an object-relational mapping layer for Ruby and MySQL.
lingua             0.5-1  Calculate statistics and readibility measures of English texts.
linguistics       1.02-1  A generic, language-neutral framework for extending Ruby objects with
log4r            1.0.5-1  A flexible logging system written in Ruby.
madeleine        0.6.1-1  Madeleine is a Ruby implementation of Object Prevalence.
mahoro             0.1-1  Simple bindings for the libmagic library.
math-const       1.0.1-1  Collection of mathematical and physical constants.
metatags           1.0-1  Define and produce sets of tagged metadata in the code. 
midilib          0.8.3-1  Library for handling standard MIDI files and manipulating MIDI event data.
net-ssh          0.0.5-1  A pure Ruby module that emulates an SSH client.
objectgraph      1.0.1-1  A simple script that generates a graph of the ruby class hierarchy.
objectpool       0.2.0-1  Enables sharing of instantiated objects.
permutation      0.1.1-1  Library for creating permutations and performing simple computations on them.
pqa                1.3-1  Postgres Query Analyzer (PQA) is a library to analyze the PostgreSQL query logs.
proclib            1.0-1  Simple interface to the /proc fs on Linux.
progressbar      0.8.0-1  A text progress bar library.
purple           0.5.1-1  An in-mem database built on Judy.
racc             1.4.4-1  LALR(1) parser generator which generates Ruby code.
raccrt           1.4.4-1  Runtime support for racc.
raggle           0.3.1-1  RSS (RDF Site Summary) aggregator, written in Ruby.
rails            0.5.7-1  Web-application and persistance framework.
railties         0.5.7-3  Create Rails web-applications easily.
rake             0.4.4-1  A simple ruby build program with capabilities similar to make
rb-gsl           0.9.3-1  Ruby interface to GSL (GNU Scientific Library).
rbprof           0.2.1-1  A profiler for Ruby programs.
rcov             0.0.1-1  RPA's code coverage info and profiling overview generator
rdoc             1.8.1-3  A documentation tool for Ruby and C source files.
re                0.11-1  Regexp engine written entirely in Ruby.
redcloth        2.0.11-1  A module for using Textile, a very simple text format.
rhdl             0.4.3-1  Ruby Hardware Description Language.
ri-rpa             0.1-4  Ruby Interactive reference
rlg              0.2.1-1  Framework for graph data structures and algorithms.
rlimit             1.0-1  Provides #getrlimit and #setrlimit.
rpa-base        0.2.0-21  A port/package manager for the Ruby Production Archive (RPA)
rubyinline       3.0.1-1  Embed C or C++ external module code in your Ruby script directly. 
rubyzip          0.5.5-1  Ruby module for reading and writing zip files
runt             0.2.0-1  Define patterns of date recurrence using set expressions.
ruvi            0.4.10-2  vim clone.
sds                0.3-1  Database access library based on Apple Enterprise Objects Framework.
simplemail         0.3-1  Simple wrapper class which popen?s sendmail(1) to send email.
snmp             0.2.0-1  A Ruby implementation of SNMP.
speedreader        0.2-1  Helps you to improve your reading speed.
sqlite           1.3.0-1  Ruby bindings for SQLite
statistics      020920-1  Math::Statistics provides basic statistical methods.
stream           0.5.0-1  Extended External Iterators (forward and backward)
sympop           0.9.1-1  Simple tool for downloading mail from mail servers.
sys-host         0.5.0-2  Provides hostname and ip address information for a given host.
sys-uptime       0.4.0-1  Interface to the 'uptime' command. This is a C extension, not parsed output.
test-unit-mock    0.03-1  Build mock objects in Test::Unit test cases easily.
tex-hyphen         0.2-1  Hyphenates a word according to a TeX pattern file.
text-format       0.64-1  Library to perform text formatting capabilities under Ruby.
tldlib             0.2-1  Library for looking up TLDs (top level domains).
types           0.1.80-1  A library to perform runtime type checking in Ruby
webfetcher       0.5.5-1  Library to fetch large ammounts of documents and images from the web.
webgen           0.1.0-1  Static web page generator. 


-- 
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batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com