From: "Mauricio Fernández" <batsman.geo@...>
Date: 2004-10-28T22:14:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Gems as key? Re: The real Ruby vs. Python.

On Thu, Oct 28, 2004 at 09:08:08PM +0900, David A. Black wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Oct 2004, Mauricio Fern�ndez wrote:
> 
> > If you really want to use rpa-base (maybe you need atomicity or strong
> > dependency management?), take a look at the above link and feel free to
> > ask :)
> 
> Clarification, in case anyone misunderstands:  I don't know what your
> threshold is for "strong", but Ruby Gems has dependency management,
> and I haven't seen anything non-strong about it.

"Strong dependency management" means that the system ensures no invalid
state (where the dependencies are not fully satisfied) can be reached.
In that sense, RubyGems' dependency management isn't "strong".

The problems are fairly subtle and easy to overlook; I myself didn't
notice them at first when working on rpa-base.

RubyGems' versioning model makes it difficult to track reverse
dependencies: currently user intervention is required to ensure no
dependencies are broken on uninstall, and the installation/removal
of a RubyGems package plus its dependencies isn't performed as a
transaction. There are also some essentially unsolvable issues at runtime
(unsatisfiable dependencies).


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