From: Its Me <itsme213@...>
Date: 2004-10-28T01:09:05+09:00
Subject: Gems as key? Re: The real Ruby vs. Python.


"Abe Vionas_MailingList" <mailinglist_abe@yahoo.com> wrote

> What it comes down to is what it's coming down to for
> me... platform maturity.

This bites me quite often as well, though I have not given up. There are
likely hordes of unwashed masses like me, not entirely adept at
source-patch-recompile-rebuild, who never even get started with Ruby because
of the kinds of issues Abe describes.

Their loss or Ruby's? Unfortunately, probably both.

I feel gems is one of the keys to getting past this. Gems can make my local
(Windows) Ruby install feel like
  - a single plug-in system
  - pulling together 'requires'
  - incorporating documentation from a single starting point
  - including compatible versions and dependencies

It would be great if gems was part of the standard Ruby distribution, if RPA
could use gems as its underlying package manager (reducing confusion for
newBs), and if RPA could then also take on the role of Release Manager for
Ruby itself.

Some misc thoughts:

- Could gems ALSO cover binaries AND binary/library dependencies?

- Could the gems RDOCs have links to some gems-aligned community
documentation site, as someone else proposed here recently?