From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2004-10-12T05:09:30+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] dev-utils v1.0

On Mon, Oct 11, 2004 at 12:07:47PM +0900, Chad Fowler wrote:
> On Mon, 11 Oct 2004 10:59:16 +0900, Mauricio Fern�ndez
> <batsman.geo@yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 
> > As I said above, the process was relatively easy because Gavin followed
> > many of the good practices documented in rpa-base's wiki.
> 
> So by that you mean to use obvious directory names, don't do anything
> fancy with test suites, and use rdoc for documentation.  Is that it? 

You're missing some details specified in 

http://rpa-base.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.cgi?GoodPractices

> Pretty much exactly what it says in the gems chapter of the Pickaxe,
> it turns out ;)

As I've said before, I would have liked that chapter to include more
general information about good practices wrt. packaging, which would
benefit all systems. The <1 page "package layout" section in that
chapter isn't quite enough IMHO. It is also a pity that you couldn't
document the "Rational Versioning Policy" which was presented by 
Jim Weirich in his RubyConf talk and first described by Eivind Eklund
in April
(http://rubyforge.org/pipermail/rubygems-developers/2004-April/000294.html).

It would be nice it you could list the expectations/assumptions of
RubyGems (the software) since that would help shape up RubyGems' policy
and foster fruitful interaction between the two projects.

> > Moreover, it lacks information about the "build dependencies" (required
> > to generate the documentation).
> 
> What do you mean by "build dependencies" in this context?

Other libraries/applications that are only needed to build the package:
they are not required to *use* it and can be safely removed afterwards
(and rpa-base's package GC does remove them).

RubyGems doesn't have an equivalent concept because the 'gem build'
process must be performed by the original developers themselves, as
the rest of the packaging.

> > I'd like to remind you once again that the conversion involves much
> > more than a simple change in the package format. In general, systems
> > with a package manager have some associated policies, which determine
> > the quality of packages in that context --- besides being just "legal"
> > as far as the format it concerned. 
> 
> Obviously.  But if you could run a script and have everything setup
> for an inspection/sign-off, I imagine it would make things easier.  I
> guess it's really not worth the effort.

This would work much better if the "standard" directory structure (the
one that setup.rb has used for years) was promoted more actively and
more gems respected it. I understand it can be difficult for RubyGems to
adopt any policy (since you always depend on 3rd parties) but it would
become much easier if the gem build process encouraged it actively,
just like original developers are encouraged to use "require 'rubygems'"
because otherwise their software won't work once gemified ;-)

> By "remove rubygems dependencies" are you saying you had to remove
> "require 'rubygems'" and a few "require_gem" statements or was it
> something somehow more involved?

Something a bit less obvious (the "shadowed requires" problem).

-- 
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batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com