From: Ryan Leavengood <RyanL@...>
Date: 2001-11-02T00:47:04+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:24091] Re: RubyGems Discussion

> > A potential drawback with using an established zip/tar.gz format is
that
> > people might make gems without metadata since they've heard/read
that
> > "Ruby's gems files are ordinary zip files". But it might only be a
minor
> > problem...
> >
> > /Robert
> 
> An possible answer to that would be creation of a packaging utility
> (GemCutter?) included with RubyGem. Most people would use that; those
> who choose to venture into the guts of hand rolling their own gem
files
> would presumably be well aware of the caveats.

I don't want people to ever have to roll their own gems.  The utility
for creating gems has been a part of the system from the earliest
prototype.  Also metadata is one of the most critical parts of making
RubyGems a useful system, so not having them could be a problem.

I also don't think that using the zip file format is needed (well not at
the moment.)  Compression is minimally useful considering the small size
of most Ruby libraries and has drawbacks such as added complexity and
the added time needed to decompress.  Of course that may change in the
future when I begin really thinking about Ruby C extensions.  But for
now I'm keeping things simple (only supporting pure Ruby libraries.)
DTSTTCPW [1].

I do find it interesting that even though I never looked at the zip file
format my two current formats for RubyGems have a certain similarity
(based on what I saw in an earlier ruby-talk message.)  So actually
adding a zip file format to the system in the future shouldn't be that
hard if you guys really want it.  But that doesn't mean you should then
assume that all gems are in zip format.  I intend to have sufficient
utilities with the final system that having to resort to using WinZip to
install or something will not be necessary.

Try to keep in mind that just like Ruby looked to other languages for
some features and added more, RubyGems will have ideas from various
other packaging systems (Java jar, Debian dpkg, etc.) and also more.
I'm trying to make something better than those past systems with certain
Ruby-centric features.  So let's not pigeonhole RubyGems into being just
Ruby's jar or dpkg.  It will be more than that.

Ryan Leavengood

Footnotes
1. Do The Simplest Thing That Could Possibly Work.