From: Marc Heiler Date: 2007-05-04T23:13:32+09:00 Subject: Gem-only releases Hi there. This request goes mostly to library authors that just love gems, which seem to be an increasingly number of them lately especially in conjunction with rake and Rakefiles. :-) I have noticed that quite a lot of library writers do make gem only releases. Now first, let me say, I do not have a huge problem with gem itself. I can see especially Windows users benefitting from that. For me though it is a lesser problem which gem seems to solve for several reasons, but before I decide to go off-topic and explain lengthy, making this mail longer, let me just state that I agree that "rubygem" itself is important and good to have. My point now is, though - please please please - consider to also release non-gem versions IF you do release a gem version of your library! I am aware that a user can probably easily repackage a .gem file on his/her own, or you could just tell a user that you will only maintain the .gem and he should use it too, for me though I would want to have the option to NOT use gems if there are other options available. It feels like a tiny bit of freedom in choice - and yes, it is not a big issue anyway. But enough to mention it. ;) The other, more profound reason is that I myself was sometimes not able to repackage a .gem. Blame my incompetence for this. I'd personally simply prefer if I'd have a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 (I repackage locally to .tar.bz2 anyway via a ruby script) Sometimes an author seems to be unsure what to release too, one example mkrf (i hope the author forgives me for using his decent project as example): http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1748&release_id=11072 You can see the releases sometimes being .gem only, or .gem + zip .... or .gem + .tgz ;-) Better examples (for me, as a user) would be http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=12&release_id=11315 as the latest releases seem to be in .gem .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 I get to choose whether to use .gem or not. Maybe I could persuade the one or other to consider. :-) -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.