From: Mauricio Fernandez <mfp@...>
Date: 2008-02-19T20:02:11+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] FastRI 0.3.1: faster, Leopard compatibility, etc.

On Tue, Feb 19, 2008 at 03:05:06PM +0900, Eric Hodel wrote:
> On Feb 18, 2008, at 03:53 AM, Mauricio Fernandez wrote:
> >$ ri -T collect_file
> >More than one method matched your request. You can refine
> >your search by asking for information on one of:
> >
> >    Test::Unit::Collector::Dir#collect_file,
> >    Test::Unit::Collector::Dir#collect_file,
> >    Test::Unit::Collector::Dir#collect_file,
> >    Test::Unit::Collector::Dir#collect_file,
> >    Test::Unit::Collector::Dir#collect_file
> >
> >Unfortunately, ri is so slow and buggy that many (me included) find it
> >unusable. FastRI is just an usable ri with some extra features  (working
> >RubyGems support, full-text search, configurable lookup order,  better
> >search strategies, etc.).
> 
> Strange, I don't see a bug filed in the tracker matching this:
> 
> http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?group_id=627&atid=2472
> 
> If "many" people are having this problem, I would expect one of them  
> to file a bug.

I attribute that to the "broken window effect". Once a piece of software is
buggy enough, people perceive it as essentially unmaintained and no longer
bother to file bug reports --- what for, if you believe they will go nowhere?
ri probably crossed that threshold a couple years ago. You might disagree on
this.

I don't see any gain in trying to fix the old ri anymore. There's nothing
particularly good or elegant in its code base, it's buggy and hard to refactor
because there are no tests, and where its functionality overlaps with
FastRI's, the latter does better.

Even though I haven't made any special effort to promote FastRI and I only
released a couple versions in the last year, several thousand people have
installed it. I believe most users were not drawn to it by the features it has
over ri such as full-text search or smarter lookup strategies. I rather think
that they experienced enough problems with ri to look for an alternative. ri
is included in Ruby's standard distribution, so you need a compelling reason
before you bother to locate and install an alternative.  The situation can be
compared to that of IE and Firefox on MS Windows systems.

-- 
Mauricio Fernandez  -   http://eigenclass.org