From: "M. Edward (Ed) Borasky" <znmeb@...>
Date: 2007-11-21T00:30:51+09:00
Subject: Re: RubyGems 0.9.5

Michael Greenly wrote:
> Hardly... in all package managed systems /usr/lib belongs to the package 
> manager.  No other application should ever be mucking around in there. 
> This is not something unique to Debian based systems.  It's just that 
> Debian users tend to be more more vocal about these policies.

Let me emphasize what you just said. /usr/lib belongs to the package 
manager on all distros! There's a *reason* the Ruby source and most 
other upstream sources install to ("--prefix" in "configure") 
*/usr/local* rather than */usr* by default. So ... your options are

1. Work with the packages as supplied by your distro.
2. *Don't* install the packages supplied by your distro -- use upstream 
source and put things in /usr/local.
3. Complain and whine to busy people who will blow you off. :)