From: David Garamond <davegaramond@...>
Date: 2003-01-25T10:25:42+09:00
Subject: Re: Can we attack the 'not enough libraries' thing straight on?

dblack@candle.superlink.net wrote:
>>>I don't know what Simon thinks, but I really do think that exactly.  It
>>>took me a while to find NArray.  The only reason why I can find it in RAA
>>>now is because I already know it exists.
>>
>>Right. I believe there are decent Ruby modules for handling MIME mails;
>>of course, I can't find them, because they're not sensibly named.
> 
> Any package that doesn't turn up on an RAA search for "mime" doesn't
> deserve to be found.  Even if it's called "marcel", it should have
> "mime" in its description.

1) what if i have installed, say, 150 packages from RAA. i forgot which 
modules are the mime modules. of course i can search RAA again, or i can 
do a "grep -r" on my site_ruby/ directory. but with perl modules i can 
do "man -k MIME" or just know that it will be below the MIME/ subdirectory.

2) what if i have several ruby packages tarballs laying around in my 
download directory...

3) what if i am looking at someone else's ruby code and see "require 
'marcel'", "require 'bobbit'", "require 'hamster'", ...

encoding some metada (esp. the categorical one) into the 
namespace/filename itself will make things much easier, much more 
predictable, much more organized. take a look at RPM packages for 
another example (in this case, an RPM filename include the 
architecture/type/version/release metadata).

-- 
dave