From: Bill Atkins <NOatkinwSPAM@...>
Date: 2006-03-02T02:08:37+09:00
Subject: RubyGems issues


Here are some issues I've noticed with RubyGems' user interface:

   - Why do I have to confirm each _required_ dependency?  What chance
     is there of leaving off a required dependency and still having a
     functioning install?

   - Why does each confirmation happen individually?  It would make
     sense to confirm or reject _all_ required dependencies and thus
     abort the install, but I can't see any reason for the current way
     of doing things.  At the very least, why can't it find all the
     dependencies for the current package so that I can hit 'Y'
     repeatedly, instead of waiting a second or two for it to find the
     next dependency?

   - Why do i have to specify -r on the command line to build
     remotely?  I understand that local gem installations are possible
     (and maybe even common), but wouldn't it make sense for gem to
     assume that "gem install rails" is a remote install and "gem
     install rails.gem" is a local install?  In this case it wouldn't
     have to bother with this "attempting local installation"
     business.

   - Why on earth, on earth, on earth is the package's documentation
     built locally?  It is by far the lengthiest part of the install,
     and I can see no good reason why this couldn't be done at gem
     build-time.  Am I missing something here?  How could the
     documentation differ from one machine to the next such that this
     approach would make sense?

   - When there are warnings in the documentation building, why do
     these appear last, making it seem that there were problems in
     installing the gem itself?

   - Why so little output while installing?  Can't i at least pass a
     -v flag to get a better indication of what's actually happening?
     It would certainly make gem installs seem more responsive.

I don't use gems that often, but whenever I do, I remember these
problems and get deeply frustrated.  If gems is going to be included
in the next Ruby release, it can't hurt to at least have some of these
issues considered and either fixed or debunked.

 - a crotchety old RPA-user