[ruby-talk:15960] Ruby Standard and Enterprise Edition

One of the best "marketing" things that Java did was there standard and 
enterprise edition bundles. Maybe this is something we should do with 
ruby as well.  The core idea would be that we would not have to compile 
all those important libraries over and over again.

One of the big things that got ruby off the ground was not having to 
personally compile everything -- something that generally has to be done 
with Ruby. You want LDAP support, compile it yourself. You want XSL 
support, compile it yourself.

IMHO, the use of standard bundles would benefit Ruby in a variety of 
ways:

1. People would not have to compile all the libraries for there 
platforms making it easier to use
2. Easier corporate buy-in by saying "Advanced edition" comes with XXXX
3. Applications can state Advanced Edition 1.4 as a pre-req
5. People would not have to compile all the libraries for there 
platforms making it easier to use
6. People would not have to compile all the libraries for there 
platforms making it easier to use
7. same as 1, 5, and 6

[Did I mention how much I hate compiling C/C++ code???]

I was thinking the following bundles:

1. Standard Edition -- Just ruby and the core Libraries (and ruby unit)
2. Advanced Edition -- includes XML, XSL
3. Enterprise Edition -- includes the LDAP,DBD:DBI,  mod_ruby, eRuby

(off the top of my head)

The standard edition is important so people can complain about 14mb 
downloads and bloatware!

Considering the libraries are in such flux, it would not be expected to 
make a new release with each library but for the first while we might do 
a new release every three or six months.

We could also pick a key series to support: OS/X, Linux, BSD, Windows, 
Solaris, AIX as the base.

Any thoughts? Any volunteers?

Bryan

[Now I got to go back and figure out why extconf.rb is not picking up 
libpq for the Postgres driver. Grumble!]