From: Dave Howell Date: 2006-02-23T06:32:13+09:00 Subject: Re: Don't let this happen to Ruby, pleeeeease? On Feb 20, 2006, at 7:32, Tanner Burson wrote: >> I agree. I have and use Ruby because I want to build programs and >> tools >> for myself...in Ruby. The time I spend having to poop around with >> recompiling Ruby, reinstalling Ruby, re-downloading source for Ruby, >> debugging Ruby's installers, is wasted time. I wasted something like >> three or four hours trying to get readline support working with irb, >> IIRC. > > > Did you document this struggle (for success or failure)? To complain > about > a lack of documentation is fine. To be presented with an opportunity > to > help the situation, but instead just complain, that I find a bit rude. Well, the last time I had a problem with the Ruby core itself, I just hammered at it for a while until it worked. I think I just wiped my downloaded source-install folder and started over, since some part of the Make got bent during the first attempt. My most recent major frustration was actually with RubyCocoa, and I did post quite a few messages to the rubycocoa mailing list. Some of them, er, reflected my frustration at the time more than might be considered polite, but nobody there threw anything my way except helpful suggestions. :) I discovered and pointed out that the Rubycocoa installer choked on an install path with a space in it, which was quickly fixed. If you want to see some of my very early problems with installing Ruby, you might check out http://www.rubygarden.org/ruby?InstallingElsewhere > Pointing fingers is fine, lending a hand will make you friends. I > don't > mean this is a flame, or a personal attack, Nor did I take it as such. :) > So please, if you find rough spots, places that you spend hours that > you > think you should only spend minutes, document the steps you took, the > errors > you received, the problems you hit, and submit them. At the very least > you'll get a better informed answer, and at the best you'll have helped > produce new documentation. I also offer in my defense my post to the recent thread here entitled "postgres database"... "A suggestion to the wider PostgreSQL-using Ruby populace; I was somewhat confused until I figured out that I had to install at least part of Postgres (bits of library files, I think) on the machine running Ruby in order to talk to the database that's running on a different system. "If somebody should happen to write/update/expand upon the instructions for installing Postgres support into Ruby to include the case where the Ruby code is being installed and/or running on a system without local Postgres, that'd probably be a good thing . . . :) Maybe some way to permanently bind the libraries into the gem-installed Ruby bits?" Plus my contributions (of some unknown value :) to the recent pile of postings about "What is a symbol?"