From: David Ross <dross@...>
Date: 2004-10-15T23:13:00+09:00
Subject: Re: Eating sandwiches in the park

Michael DeHaan wrote:

>I am but a new convert here (coming from many languages, but loving
>Perl most) ... so anyhow, first post for me.
>
>One of the thing that draws me deeper into Ruby is the ability to
>completely muck with the internals of the language, more so even than
>Perl (where symbol table manipulation, for instance, was common).   
>Rewriting builtins or other modules via included modules is more
>automagical than what Java-fans would push on us with AOP (shudder) or
>reflection.   And it's totally transparent.   Nice!
>
>If this means we can have supernatural parks where sandwiches turn
>into were-sheep, I'm all for it.   Sometimes people want languages
>that keep themselves from shooting themselves in the foot, and keep
>poor programmers from doing damage.   Ruby is not that language, and
>that's why I like it.
>
>(now if we could only get something as good as CPAN in the core...but
>that's another story...)
>
>  
>
There is a project that is CPAN-like, its called RPA. It ca be found at

http://rubyarchive.org/

The purpose is to offer high quality packages and provide excellent QA 
of ports. It takes the tiem off developers hands and puts it in others 
which are experts at packaging. You can also create your own packages 
and run the command with a web address. It'll automatically fetch and 
install the package. rpa-base does install ruby documentation, if any, 
to the ri document location. rpa-base can even build any modules that 
require non-ruby code to be compiled. Batsman(Mauricio Fernandez), is 
also on irc. If you have any questions, stop by and they will be answered.

irc:#rpa@irc.freenode.net

David Ross