From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2004-08-23T03:26:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Package requests for the prelim. Ruby Production Archive

> A recent blog entry at
> http://www.thekode.net/blog/Tech/Ruby/rpa-packages.html
> says,
> 
> "I have invited the people from ruby-talk to request packages for the 
> Ruby Production Archive. So far the response has been a bit 
> disappointing; seemingly no Rubyist wants to use software packaged with 
> some care, or maybe it�s just that the 114 packages currently available 
> cover all needs?"

It's damn good! A fair bit ahead of where I am. Everything I currently
use is in there, my own ruby-xattr aside.

> I'm sure Mauricio meant no disrespect, but this seems to imply that 
> packages currently available from RubyForge and elsewhere are *not* 
> packaged with some care.  No doubt some of these *are* fairly 
> half-assed, but there may be many other reasons why people prefer not to 
> use rpa; poor Windows support being a real possibility.

I can testify as to the varying quality of the author's packaging. I've
been working really hard on building RPM specs for Ruby packages for the
PLD distro, and it's tough, slow going.  Some things (notably using a
modern setup.rb from Minero Aoki) are very easy. Others I've had to
fight with a lot, trying to get them to comply with the Linux Filesystem
Heirarchy Standard and other requirements. It's not easy.

I'm looking forward to trying rpa-base soon -- I haven't had the time (I
spent four hours trying to figure out why Ruby wouldn't compile on Sparc
or Alpha processors, only to find it was the Oniguruma preview failing
on some architectures)

For RPA, I can see windows support being important. I imagine that
limits its usage by about half.

Ari