From: Massimiliano Mirra <list@...>
Date: 2002-01-12T00:25:01+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] rpkg 0.1 (long)

On Fri, Jan 11, 2002 at 02:34:41PM +0900, Holden Glova wrote:
> I think this is something that should be discussed, i'm just not sure how to 
> do it yet. How does setup.rb and install.rb handle installing things? 

I think it checks with rbconfig.rb first, too, at least that is what
`ruby install.rb config' should be for.  (rpkg does not use
install.rb.)

> From the little thought I have given this sensitive subject I
> thought that packages would also need to have a standard install
> script that they run and use, which if you are using the RAA
> setup.rb and/or install.rb files also demands a standard directory
> structure. IMHO this would be a good thing :)

install.rb and setup.rb only seem to handle lib/ext and bin files, but
some more conventions would IMHO bring many advantages, that's why I
added test/ and doc/ from the beginning.  This way the docs all lie in
the same place, and if we had a ri output formatter for rdoc we could
1) generate docs on the fly when installing new packages, 2) have
human readable/browsable documentation and 3) docstrings accessible
much like Python's (say from irb) but without the overhead of storing
them in the code itself.

The 3) has been the subject of some off-list hacking for Guy and me
after I posted documentable.rb and we had it work (mostly) for both
user defined classes and classes already documented through ri, so it
is less hypothetic than it might seem.

Pre-installation and post-installation scripts for rpkg are also on
the TODO list.  Actually, it would take just a few lines to implement
them now, but I'd rather first stabilize those things it already does.


Massimiliano