From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-10-23T10:18:23+09:00
Subject: Re: RAA.succ?

In article <1035310903.958074.2185.nullmailer@picachu.netlab.jp>,
Yukihiro Matsumoto <matz@ruby-lang.org> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>In message "Re: RAA.succ?"
>    on 02/10/23, Phil Tomson <ptkwt@shell1.aracnet.com> writes:
>
>|Those are all great changes, but it still doesn't address the fact that 
>|the RAA is just a list of links to potentially non-existent locations.  
>|Key packages could be lost after their creators loose interest.
>|The RAA needs a change in structure not just a change of interface.
>
>OK, OK.  Let me clarify.
>
>We really need a new RAA with better interface.  This is what Nahi and
>others are working on.

As I said before, those are good efforts but we need some way to protect 
our codebase.  Sure, the Ruby sourcecode is protected and even under CVS, 
but a lot of these modules listed on RAA are also important to the success 
of Ruby and they need to be preserved. 

>
>We also need something like CPAN for Ruby, aka RAA.succ.  But it
>requres much work and time.  So we go step by step.
>

Yes, it will require some effort to do it and to do it right.  I'm just 
trying to light a fire to hasten those efforts. ;-)

As a short term fix, perhaps it would be good if we could copy all of the 
modules listed on the RAA to the ruby-lang.org ftp site? (is there room?)
It's not ideal, of course, but it does offer some measure of protection.
Perhaps a script that would walk the RAA links, download the various 
packages and copy them to the ftp site would be in order.  It could also 
generate a report of broken links that could be posted here so people 
could fix their broken links - BTW: I'm also guilty, I noticed today that 
one of the RAA links for one of my modules is broken - I moved some files 
around in my directories which lead to the broken link...  

Phil