From: Zed Shaw <zedshaw@...>
Date: 2006-06-22T12:01:45+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Mongrel 0.3.13.1 -- Quick Small Fixes

On Thu, 2006-06-22 at 02:50 +0900, James Britt wrote:
> Zed Shaw wrote:
> 
> > 
> > James, you seem like a non-newbie Ruby fellow, judging from:
> > 
> > http://www.jamesbritt.com/
> > 
> > So I'm curious why you mention the update command updating all your gems
> > every time I tell people to update.  Are you indirectly saying I
> > shouldn't tell people that, or are you asking a question?  From your
> > blog it would seem that you understand RubyGems fairly well so I'm a
> > little baffled why your e-mail seems to imply that you're baffled by the
> > update command.
> 
> No, I don't understand rubygems all that well.  Like much software, the 
> available commands have evolved, and I tend to use only a small subset 
> with any regularity, so over time I lose tack of what the current 
> options are and how they may differ from past behavior.
> 
> As with much software, there can be unintended behavior or inconsistent 
> behavior with unpleasant side effects.  At least at some point running 
> gem update would simply update all gems even if you gave a list of gems. 
>   Now you can update selected gems, but the initial behavior is still 
> there if called with no other arguments, which is what you instructed.
> 

You know, the guy who runs ruby-doc.org should be able to read
documentation.

> > 
> > Not being harsh, just curious why you mention this every time.  Maybe
> > there's something about gem update that I'm missing and you need to just
> > tell me about?  Maybe a misunderstanding that the RubyGems manual
> > doesn't clarify?
> 
> Because, they way your mail states it, (or at least the way I read it), 
> you are suggesting that people run this:
> 
>   gem update
> 
> which will update all installed gems
> 
> And I've been bitten by that before; not all updates are good, and 
> undoing an update or locking code to specific gem versions can get 
> tedious.
> 
> But this command:
> 
>   gem install mongrel

Then just come out and say that.  Don't be a passive aggressive twerp
about it.  Pony up some cajones and say, "Hey Zed, you should tell
people to use gem install mongrel."  I'll then just adjust my
documentation for the folks like you who can't keep up with their gems.

Now that you've gone and done a massive round-about 10 e-mail passive
aggressive indirection maneuver to get to where you can finally say what
you want to say, I'm just going to continue doing this so that you can
be properly annoyed from now on.

Even more bizarre is how you're doing this to get the RubyGems team to
change their project.  Talk about a Rube Goldberg machine.  "My e-mail
pretends to be a newbie to ask Zed why I should do a gem update to
mongrel so that RubyGems will add a prompt!  It's brilliant!"

Next time, be direct about what you want, and don't waste my time.
There's legit users with real problems who need my help.  Guys like you
should know better.

-- 
Zed A. Shaw
http://www.zedshaw.com/
http://mongrel.rubyforge.org/