From: Alex Young <alex@...>
Date: 2007-01-14T20:33:10+09:00
Subject: Re: Optional Dependencies in Rubygems

Chris Carter wrote:
> Ok, so after the long Hoe discussion, I have decided to add
> optional/developer-time dependencies to ruby-gems.
> 
> The first implementation will be purely for developer-dependencies,
> not for optional "This will be faster with blah blah blah"
> dependencies, for the time being, but I do plan to leave the API
> addition open enough so other styles of dependencies can be added.
> 
> I would like to know what kind of behaviour for installing the
> optional dependencies should be.  I believe that when normally
> installing a gem, it should not prompt you at all to install or warn
> of the optional dependencies, because they are developer dependencies.
> Ideas for cmd line flags?
> 
The obvious one:  you've already got -y/--include-dependencies, so why 
not -Y/--include-all-dependencies (or --include-optional-dependencies)? 
  I can't think of a situation where you'd want the optional but not the 
required dependencies, but being able to list them prior to installing 
them would be nice.

-- 
Alex