From: Richard Kilmer Date: 2004-10-07T05:49:16+09:00 Subject: Re: RubyGems and RPA On 10/6/04 3:11 PM, "Austin Ziegler" wrote: > On Thu, 7 Oct 2004 03:00:45 +0900, Richard Kilmer wrote: >> On 10/6/04 11:42 AM, "Eivind Eklund" wrote: >>> If we can make this possible, it would be great - I think it could >>> help raise adoption of Ruby a lot. Conversely, if we make this >>> harder, we lower the adoption. >> I think you are ignoring a very important platform...Win32. Realize that >> Ruby is a very effective language for folks that merely want to automate >> their platform, and most computer users are running Win32 (unfortunate, but >> true). For them, they want binary versions of libraries and a graphical >> installer. RubyGems does support win32, and will include a GUI for gems >> management. > > ...AND, we Win32 users don't want RubyGems (or any other packaging > system) cluttering our normal installer. Yes, well, _our normal installer_ is 11MB and growing, and it does not include every library in the Ruby community. The idea is to provide a downloadable ruby installer with basics and a GUI to download any other library (as a gem) you want so you can work with them. I support about 20 different folks on my project here at DARPA who use Ruby on Win32...they are all different (from programmers to domain experts). They have all suffered through trying to install various libraries at different times to help them use this language I taught them and they now really enjoy. A gems-based GUI would help tremendously for Win32 users. -rich > > -austin