From: James Edward Gray II <james@...>
Date: 2004-08-31T22:53:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby for system administration

On Aug 31, 2004, at 7:43 AM, David Ross wrote:

> Trying to stick with the stock from the maintainers
> can be quite silly for some software.

If a system administrator maintains 30+ similarly configured boxes and 
decides to go with one non-standard module he gives himself 30+ 
installs to do immediately, 30+ versions to track, and a permanent 
extra step every time a box is rebuilt or added.  Naturally, this is 
their job and they have the tools to help them do it (hopefully), but 
it's still not a decision made lightly for obvious reasons.

However, in this case, the requirement seems a touch unreasonable to 
me.  I'm not familiar with any scripting language that does this, 
though my experience is far from all-encompassing.  Ruby's system() or 
backticks could obviously call out to rpm as needed.

These modules definitely do not belong in the Standard Library, because 
not a high enough percentage of users has need for them and of those 
that do, needs vary.  Being a Mac OS X user, all of the packages listed 
earlier in this thread are useless to me, by way of example.

James Edward Gray II