From: Tanner Burson <tanner.burson@...>
Date: 2005-04-19T00:37:03+09:00
Subject: Re: All Quiet on the Western Front: Is Rails overshadowing Ruby?

On 4/18/05, itsme213 <itsme213@hotmail.com> wrote:
> 
> "Trans" <transfire@gmail.com> wrote in message
> 
> > Tobias, you misunderstand me. I am all for versioning. Its the
> > implementation of it that I think has been problematic. Consider all
> > your scripts with #require_gem. Would they work in an enviroment where
> > the support packages were manually installed. No. You'd have to go back
> > and change them to #require; or have created a rescue clause to deal
> > with it to begin with; and thus more work to do in order to
> > redistribute you programs. Rather I think there should be a standard
> > method #require_version that Ruby supports out-of-the-box, and the libs
> > should be stored in the typical fashion --with links to the lastest
> > versions (examples of such excelent packaging systems include RubyX and
> > Gobo Linux). Implementing in this manner would have, indeed, still can,
> > thwart the issues with RUBYOPT.
> 
> This does sound like a very attractive alternative. Standard locations and
> directory structure, plus one new directive for versioning.
> 
> 

That's a great idea, but relying on OS dependent functionality
(symlinks) would go against ruby's nature at this point.  Coming up
with a platform independant way of handling the versions is key, its
easy to think in terms of a specific environment and come up with a
solution, but to have a solution that works on nearly all platforms is
far more complex.