From: Marc Heiler Date: 2009-04-23T20:43:08+09:00 Subject: Re: Ruby or JRuby > Installing Ruby1.8 and Ruby1.9 on the same machine is a major pain. It is a breeze if you use Application-like approaches (like on Gobolinux). I still, up today, wonder why there are problems with Mac OS X + ruby. Anyway, if you follow the FHS approach then for sure things will get messy, because the FHS itself encourages bad practise. Just look at the workaround provided before: /usr/local/ruby1.8.6/bin/ruby /usr/local/ruby1.8.7/bin/ruby /usr/local/ruby1.9.0/bin/ruby It uses versioned directories already. When will people realize that the FHS in itself does not evolve in any way? I do however think that these directories look ugly, and wont be in the default search path anyway. Gobolinux would use /Programs/Ruby/1.8.6 for this, Heretix/Rubyx did use /pkg/ruby/1.9.6 (unfortunately this distribution died...), what PC-BSD is using I dont know but I think /pkg too - not sure here. > that's why the suffix thing makes no sense to me Personally, I never understood why i.e. debian makes a symlink to ruby1.8 (or the other way around) Versioning binaries is another hack to work around what the FHS imposes on you - else, there would be no need for symlinking binary versions at all, no? PS: Gems, even if they work nicely, will forever be dependent on the FHS, for as long as distributions use it. And thus, gems will forever have those problems which popup again _and_ again. (rubygems are nice though, i just think that they should be an integral part of ruby, without the need for require 'rubygems' before any _specific_ gem is required. This explicit requiring for rubygems is a small design limitation imho.) -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.