From: ptkwt@...1.aracnet.com (Phil Tomson)
Date: 2002-12-12T17:24:52+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] jabber4r 0.3.0 (doesn't work with raa-install)

In article <20021212051843.GA5879@rysa.inetz.com>,
why the lucky stiff  <ruby-talk@whytheluckystiff.net> wrote:
>Tom Clarke (tom@u2i.com) wrote:
>> 
>> It does and it doesn't. It requires either zlib or gnu tar. As the
>> windows distribution comes with zlib, and most modern unixy platforms
>> will have gnu tar it covers most people.
>> 
>> I think my vote is to standardize on tar.gz. Any other opinions?
>> 
>
>Raa-install is in kind of in a funny place that needs defining, don't
>you think?  I mean its mission is to use the existing RAA resources to
>perform an installation.  By that definition, raa-install is at the
>mercy of the data.  To fully achieve its task, it needs to workaround
>every idiosyncracy of the data.  Fixing bad URLs, searching FTP
>directories.  

Quite true, I find that I can't use raa-install with many sourceforge 
hosted packages as there is no direct link to the package.

>If an author checks in a RAR file, then
>Raa-install must look at supporting RAR?

what's RAR?

>
>I'd truly like to see authors use the fields in RAA to contain data
>which is useful to a program such as Raa-install.  The notes section can
>be used for excess data.  If we can decide to place direct links to a
>tar.gz in the download field, then links to other compressed formats can
>be contained in the notes field.  Personally, tarballs are the natural
>choice simply because they're in the majority and raa-install already
>supports gzip and tar.
>

true...

>So if we can take some steps as a community to provide RAA with more
>specific and useful data, then a bit of software like Raa-install won't
>be some incredible wizardry.  I'm saying we standardize on [1] a
>compression format, [2] our install.rb/setup.rb process, [3] a technique
>for identifying package dependancies.  Once decided, this information
>must become pervasive, such that popular Ruby site have the information
>readily accessible.

>
>Anyways, I'm way off-topic now, but still sort of on.. :)  My vote is
>[1] tar.gz, [2] Minero Aoki's install.rb/setup.rb, [3] integration of
>install.rb and RAAInstall to provide installation of dependancies.
>

I would tend to agree...  In addition to what you've said, I think we 
should also have some sort of tool that makes it easy for package creators 
to create these package files - something like the tool that Andy Hunt 
showed at RubyConf.

As for #2 above (install.rb/setup.rb) it seems a bit awkward since this 
isn't built-in to Ruby.  I guess what I mean is that I have to keep 
setup.rb and install.rb somewhere (and remember where :) and copy them 
over to my package everytime I make a new one.  Maybe that could be done 
automatically by the packaging tool.  Or perhaps we could have an Install 
module in Ruby that is used to easily build our install.rb scripts.  
Something along the lines of how we create extentions:
1) create an inst_conf.rb:
  require 'mkinst' #Or perhaps: include Install if it's built-in module
  #hash of dependencies and versions:
  depends_on = {'rexml' => 0.5.0, 'jabber4r' => 0.1.0, 'ruby_foo' =>'*' }
  #NOTE: perhaps this depends_on hash could be built automatically...
  create_install_script(packageName, depends_on, ..other useful stuff..)

2) run inst_conf.rb:
  It creates the install.rb file for you and makes sure you have the 
correct directory structure.  It also would build a dependency list and it 
would be up to the install.rb script to handle fetching dependencies via 
raa-install.  Running inst_conf.rb could even create the .tar.gz file for 
the package (could be useful for Windows folks who don't have tar).


A few more ideas:  Now that Nahi has enforced a canonical naming scheme on 
the RAA (Why, that's why I was asking you about this earlier) it would 
seem to be fairly easy to create something that redefines the 
Kernel#require method so that it catches the 'LoadError' exception (I 
think that's what the exception is called when it can't find the file to 
be required) and tries to use raa-install to download and install the 
package.  Or perhaps an raa-exec script could be added to the raa-install 
tool suite that does something like:

#raa-exec
  alias old_require require
  def require(file)
    old_require file
    rescue LoadError
      puts "go fish!"
      #try to load the required package with raa-install here#
  end
    
load ARGV[0]
#

If you weren't sure you had all the dependencies for a particular package 
then you could run:
$raa-exec some.rb
Would this be a way of 'automatically' dealing with dependencies?

Maybe this won't work by itself since a particular package might have 
several Ruby files that might get required, so there would have to be some 
kind of mapping available somewhere that specifies which .rb files are 
available in each package... on second thought maybe it's easier just to 
have a dependency list for each package and have he package installer get 
the dependent packages...

Phil
-- 
"Or perhaps the truth is less interesting than the facts?" 
Amy Weiss (accusing theregister.co.uk of engaging in 'tabloid journalism')
Senior VP, Communications
Recording Industry Association of America