From: "Jörg W Mittag" <JoergWMittag+Usenet@...>
Date: 2008-12-24T07:01:23+09:00
Subject: Re: how to make installing Ruby easier for amateurs

Marc Heiler wrote:
>> Forget apt-get for Ruby.  Maybe one day that will work as most people
>> expect it should.  But today is not that day.
> I do not think it ever will. How many years have gone by now since the 
> first user had the problem with this concerning ruby on debian at least? 
> 3 years?
> 
> Debian Users will continue to have split-up packages, and as a result 
> continue to have all these problems which reoccur every some months on 
> the list here, or on a forum somewhere else. This is a fundamental flaw 
> in philosophy concerning packaging on Linux boxes altogether in fact.

Can you explain how this is a fundamental flaw in Linux packaging?
TeX, Emacs, Perl, PHP, Python, Java, they all share most if not all of
Ruby's challenges: all have their own directory layouts, their own
search paths, their own library paths, their own versioning schemes,
their own package managers, their own distribution formats, multiple
different implementations, multiple different versions. Most have
native C extensions. Most were not created with Linux package managers
in mind -- heck, most were created before Linux package managers even
existed.

And yet, all of them work perfectly fine. All except Ruby.

This reminds me of the guy on the freeway listening to the traffic
channel and thinking to himself: "What are they talking about, a car
driving the wrong way on the freeway? It's not *a* car, it's hundreds
of them!"

jwm