From: Carl Youngblood <carl.youngblood@...>
Date: 2004-09-28T00:21:27+09:00
Subject: Re: RPM of Ruby 1.8.x

Having a standard ruby RPM would do a lot to promote the wider
availabiltiy and distribution of ruby.  Telling someone to install
from source does not handle every contingency.


On Mon, 27 Sep 2004 10:59:23 +0900, Matt Lawrence <matt@technoronin.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Markus wrote:
> 
> >     The other option which we frequently use which dates back to before
> > RPMs is to have a build CD (which may in fact be an NFS mount) with a
> > script that runs a bunch of other scripts in a sub-directory tree.  We
> > run this script at an appropriate point the setup of new machines.  In
> > this set up, it really is dirt simple to have a script that does the
> > configure-make-make boogie but doesn't require manual intervention.
> 
> Unfortunately, that violates the "Principle Of Least Surprise".  On a
> RedHat system I should be able to find all of the software installed by
> using "rpm -q".  Even more importantly, the next sysadmin who touches the
> system should be able to do the same.
> 
> Right now I'm dealing with about 200 systems, most of which were installed
> by somebody else and handed over to my group to take care of.  Many of the
> people doing the installations seemed to have been marginally competent.
> Quite a few of the other systems were set up by a guy who is brilliant,
> but in love with CMS.  You know, it runs on IBM mainframes under VM.
> Those systems are really scarey to work on, so many things are set up so
> unexpectedly.
> 
> These are issues that developers generally don't have to deal with.
> 
> 
> 
> -- Matt
> It's not what I know that counts, it's what I can remember in time to use.
> 
>