From: David Vallner <david@...>
Date: 2006-09-10T09:03:39+09:00
Subject: Re: Cross-platform standalone Ruby apps ?

M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> Which means you need at least a .deb and .rpm binary package, Debian
> source and RPM source, a pure source tarball for everyone else and a
> friend in the Gentoo community to make you an ebuild from the tarball.
> :) Makes gem look better and better with each word I type. :)
> 

Gems aren't a bad choice either - the problem is that there Are Some 
Issues with applications in gems. At least there were with "resource" 
lookup, Trans' Facets couldn't find its default data / config files a 
while ago.

I wonder if that kink was already ironed out.

And with decent tool support, it can't be THAT hard to provide native 
packaging once you set up your environment right. Never tried though, 
I'll admit.

> But if there's a gem I want that isn't in the Gentoo Portage tree, I can
> install it. Portage doesn't know it's there. I install source tarballs
> all the time; they usually go into /usr/local by default, which keeps
> them out of the way of the main distro which puts everything in /usr by
> default.
> 

I mainly have problems with config file droppings since I already forget 
to purge debs instead of removing. And what with stupid me being a 
sucker for late development releases once I see a half-decent review... 
Well, let's say that Ubuntu Breezy -> Dapper Flight 5 package config 
file update bug that clobbered the resolver ("Argh, teh interwebz don't 
work!") was not particularly fun considering the "google for an answer" 
solution wasn't available.

David Vallner