[ruby-talk:15082] Re: Standard practices for module distribution

"J J" <[e-mail]> writes:

> While we're sort of on the subject, how about:
> 
> require 'Foobar', '1.3+', 'ftp://ftp.myserver.com/pub/ruby_mods/foobar',10
> 
> '1.3+' means version 1.3 or later will work.  The ftp URL could have
> the optional myname:password@ftp.... or whatever the standard
> nomenclature is for that.  Some sort of automatic updating mechanism
> could be put in place too, where the module checks for a new version
> of itself 10 days after the first time it was run (for instance). 0
> could mean never update.  If the module isn't present, it would
> download automatically the first time the program is run.

There's been some discussion of this in the past, and the consensus
seemed to be that folks were wary of software updating itself like
this. There were also reservations from those who don't have full time
net connections.

However, when work starts on RAA.succ, I think that this may well be
an option that we provide hooks for. Rather than have each require
statement specify locations, we'll use the RAA repository to do the
hard work for us. That wil also allow dependency checking and the
like. Even then, though, I suspect the initial versions won't do more
than warn you that you're out of date, or that you have a dependency
issue.

Dave