From: James Britt <james_b@...>
Date: 2005-04-18T02:41:24+09:00
Subject: Re: All Quiet on the Western Front: Is Rails overshadowing Ruby?

Christian Neukirchen wrote:
> James Britt <james_b@neurogami.com> writes:
> 
> 
>>Rubygems has made a big difference for me.  Whereas trying a new lib
>>or application was often a series of downloads, dependency searches,
>>and installation headaches, most libraries nowadays are a snap to
>>install and explore.  Would Rails , for example, have been as
>>successful if people had to manually install the half-dozen or so
>>required libraries?
> 
> 
> Eh, there is one tar.gz that contains all of Rails libraries, where's
> the problem with that?

Still too much typing of 'ruby install.rb'

I picked Rails as an example because it was the first that came to mind 
when recalling an installation that had 4+ dependencies.

When doing a survey of Ruby XML libs a few years ago, I encountered too 
many episodes of "Install: CSI" , and would often have to first go get 
lib 'foo' (not included), which in turn insisted I get lib 'bar', and so 
  on down the food chain.

With gems, when everyone is playing along, I can write an app that 
depends on rubyzip and builder and og and orbjson, and rubygems handles 
the tedious hunt and fetch cycle.

Overall, it should encourage people to write small apps, simple but 
focused and useful, that lend themselves to being hooked together in 
interesting ways, so people can wire up tools for the various tasks they 
need done.


James