From: Hans Fugal <fugalh@...>
Date: 2006-03-31T03:28:43+09:00
Subject: Re: Unintentional hype of Ruby irb and ri


ara.t.howard@noaa.gov wrote:
> we use rhe on all our machines and i can tell you this:  the rh ruby 
> rpms are
> broken, broken, broken, broken - do not use them and please complain to 
> redhat
> (i have several times).
> 
> all the issues you are seeing are resolved by using almost any installation
> method besides rhe rpms.  it even works on fedora.
> 
> i manage about 50 machines and we've taken the compile route - however, 
> since
> all the boxes see a common nfs mount we install only once there.
> 
> rhe rpms are really really bad in general and should be avoided - for 
> example
> the image magic packages break (silently) loseless compression of 
> jp2s...  the
> perl rpm has a userland kernel panic causing bug, etc, etc.
> 
> we use plain vanilla rhe, installing anything 'important' via 
> compilation and
> have 100% success with this approach.  it's also immune to the 
> auto-upgrade of
> enterprise systems breaking 24x7 systems on a late sunday evening.
> 
> the reality is that there is exactly one method of installing ruby, or
> anything else for that matter, that will work on any platform:
> 
>   ./configure --prefix=dst && make && sudo make install
> 
> this becomes __really__ important once one starts installing gems that
> auto-compile and then upgrade ruby using rpms - only to have all gems start
> giving bus errors...  correct compilation avoids this entirely in 
> addition to
> allowing multiple ruby versions to be installed (which we require).
> 
> sad.  but true.

I can second that. I have never worked with a more frustrating 
distribution than R_HEL_ (emphasis added).