From: Kristof Bastiaensen <kristof@...>
Date: 2005-01-16T20:56:13+09:00
Subject: Re: Bug#290705: ruby: Ruby is completly vivisected.

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 20:02:08 +0900, leon breedt wrote:

> On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 19:51:19 +0900, Kristof Bastiaensen
> <kristof@vleeuwen.org> wrote:
>> It does make sense, for example when the user wants a package that is
>> written in Ruby, but doesn't want to program in Ruby itself.  In this
>> case having all the ri-documentation would just fill-up space.
> What if the same user wants to run a Ruby package that requires a core
> module to be present? Now they have to walk the dependency tree.
> Space-saving vs. convenience. Which is more likely to annoy end-users?

Apt-get should normally calculate the dependencies just fine (in a stable
package).

> 
> A compromise could be to have a virtual Ruby package that declares the
> correct dependencies to have the same modules as would be gotten by doing
> a core install from source, at least you could opt out and delete the
> virtual package and extraneous modules if you wanted to. I.e. instead of
> apt-get'ing tens of packages:
> 
> $ apt-get install ruby-core
> 
> As I recall, it was mentioned that even this compromise was not deemed
> acceptable by the Debian maintainers...although this is complete hearsay
> as I heard it on IRC, so, take it with a tonne of salt.
> 

That looks like a good solution to me.  I have the impression that Debian
maintainers like to create smaller packages, to prevent installing
unnecessary files, so I don't see why they would find it unacceptable.

Kristof