From: Michael Greenly <mgreenly@...>
Date: 2007-11-23T01:51:54+09:00
Subject: Re: RubyGems 0.9.5


>> Assuming that RubyGems is installed initially through a a distro package
>> it obviously can't update it's self in place.  I think the ideal
>> solution here is that RubyGems (through load paths) allowed for two
>> levels of installation.
> 
> Not good, won't work.
> 
>> What I mean is if the Debian distributed RubyGems was initially
>> installed right along side Ruby but an 'update --system' caused it to
>> install the new version to some none-dpkg controlled directory (that had
>> load order precedence) everything would mostly work as expected.
> 
> Bad. Special case for a mere distro.
> 


My goal is to make using Ruby seem normal from both a Ruby users and 
Debian users perspective.  This means the installation needs to happen 
with system tools; 'apt-get install ruby rubygems' and from there it 
just works like a Ruby user would expect.  Including doing a 'gem update 
--system'

After thinking about Eklund's response I think I agree that debian's 
'rubygems' package should be a wrapper script with RubyGems treated as 
data in /var/lib/gems.

This mostly works.  Gems can be gems and what it does has no effect on 
the dpkg managed files.  Except that /var/lib/gems/bin is outside of the 
$PATH.  So a noob user who does 'apt-get install ruby rubygems; gem 
install rake' and then types 'rake' at the command prompt is not going 
to get what they expect.

One option is for the install of the 'rubygems' package to fix up the 
path and add /var/lib/gems/bin.  I'm not sure about Debain policies 
regarding path modification with package installation but I do know 
doing it is not necessarily as straight forward as it would seem. 
Different runlevels and users have a different $PATH.

So for robustness I (personally) would like to see a 'gem run' command. 
This would allow for 'gem run rake' .  It's possible this could be 
provided in the Debian wrapper but I think it would be nice for it to 
universally be available so that scripts, tutorials, etc... could be 
written in a single, sure to work, robust manner for all platforms.

-- 
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