From: Gavin Sinclair <gsinclair@...>
Date: 2003-01-25T07:00:49+09:00
Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?

On Saturday, January 25, 2003, 4:49:07 AM, Daniel wrote:

> On Fri, Jan 24, 2003 at 11:29:36PM +0900, Gavin Sinclair wrote:

>>   IPC::Msg::foo ...
>>   IPC::SysV::quux ...
>> 
>> I think this is a good idea, but unlikely to happen anytime soon.

> Gavin,

> I think it's a great idea.  Why can't it happen any time soon?
> There can be a person or two who could try to sort RAA into appropriate 
> categories and those people can do this.  They don't have to be the 
> original developers.

Well, it's just that it takes a lot of non-core effort for
questionable gain.  It's "nice" but not essential.  And categorising
things like that is completely non-trivial.

I suppose you could make it easy by just maintaining a single text
file, or perhaps a Ruby hash, describing the mappings, and dynamically
building the modules on startup.

> Once the current RAA is sorted out, we can ask that authors of additional 
> modules select an appropriate category for their module.

> Your idea allows for a good structuring if RAA without forcing each 
> contributor to agree to rename their module.

> What would be the simplest way to get this into people's computers?
> Perhaps an 'aliases.rb' module that people can download?  Then the 
> download page of each module in RAA could have a link to this 
> 'aliases.rb'.  Or is this a bad idea?

I think 'std' (for standardization) is probably a more appropriate
name, and the most appropriate way to 'distribute' it is to maintain a
package of libraries that are referenced.  This way people can have a
"standard" set of libraries (sounding like a bad name now - nothing to
do the Ruby "standard library") that can be kept updated with small
patches etc.

That makes the project more worthwhile, because you're sorting the
wheat from the chaff as well as tackling the naming issue.

Gavin