From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2004-08-22T03:49:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Package requests for the prelim. Ruby Production Archive

On Sun, Aug 22, 2004 at 03:06:29AM +0900, Dave Thomas wrote:
> 
> On Aug 21, 2004, at 12:38, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:
> 
> >
> >As of today, 110 libraries/applications are available in
> >the prelim.  repository of the Ruby Production Archive (see
> >http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.cgi?Packaged_Software); I have
> >packaged all the "top-sellers" in Rubyforge and several lesser-known
> >programs.
> 
> You should probably remove RDoc, as it is bundled with Ruby. Installing 
> a parallel version will confuse things, and may well break existing 
> documentation.

That (breakage) won't happen ;)

The package is misnamed. I should have called it ri-rpa-support;
it is not a complete rdoc, just provides support for ri-rpa, and can
coexist with the normal rdoc. At any rate, were it to conflict with
the normal one (which won't happen cause it's installed under rpa-rdoc/
in sitelibdir), rpa-base would detect the conflict and prevent it.

Regarding ri-rpa, I distribute it as a separate ri with some RPA-specific
patches because I didn't want to force you to change anything in the
one shipped with Ruby only to make things easier for RPA/rpa-base
(*).  No harm is done though because it operates independently from
the standard one -- that's why I was redistributing parts of the rdoc
'runtime' to make it work.

Now, I hear the standard ri will be modified because otherwise RubyGems
wouldn't be able to achieve real ri/rdoc integration.  I hope this change
is general enough to allow other systems to leverage it (besides RPA,
other re-packagers like Debian/FreeBSD/etc could use it to provide
system-wide documentation for Ruby software).

If the RubyGems team doesn't do so, I could try to provide a patch to
allow ri integration, independently from the package/port manager.

IMHO it is important not to hinder the work of other re-packagers.

(*) Since RPA/rpa-base has not been declared the Standard, I hesitate to
ask 3rd parties to change their sw. to suit my needs. This is consistent
with repackaging stuff myself instead of asking the developers to do it
for me, which makes sense since RPA's goals are so much more ambitious
than RubyGems'.

-- 
Running Debian GNU/Linux Sid (unstable)
batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com