From: fmccor@... Date: 2003-02-07T05:54:27+09:00 Subject: Re: The way of the Gentoo MikkelFJ wrote: > I recently tried (as in not yet succeeded) to step into the world of Linux, > which let me to the way of the Gentoo. > Gentoo www.gentoo.org is a Linux distro that has a friendly (as in not /.) > community http://forums.gentoo.org/ but more to the point it has an amazing > distribution system called portage: > http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/portage-user.xml > Since Ruby already has decent configuration scripts to build .so modules on > various system (native Windows MSVC, mingw, cygwin, linux etc.) I reckon > this could be integrated into the client build system. Actually I reckon the > client could easily be written in Ruby - I suspect it's currently written in > Python although I havent investigated. Yes, much of it is in Python. > Likewise, Ruby could be distrubuted this way - I reckon it already is on > Gentoo (but I'm not that far into the install yet). I use Ruby on GenToo/sparc, and yes, it is distributed this way. You get ruby installed by saying emerge ruby (which fetches, compiles, and installs the source) and several ruby applications are available as dev-ruby/ > The next step would be integrating this system with FreeRide GUI. Nice idea. > I believe such a system would be an very significant part of moving Ruby to > a wider audience. > It would make it much more reliable to deploy Ruby solutions (even private > ones) becuase you'd only need a small script to emerge all the dependencies > of you app and a network of mirrors would ensure you could always get the > required package. Currently RAA is a link to a number of small unstable > servers and at best links to source forge projects where each dependency > most tediously be downloaded. Furthermore, the core Ruby installation could > be smaller because each user could easily add to the core. Authors of Ruby > applications no longer need to reimplement functionality because it would be > bad to depend on some mysterious package that would annoy potential users. > It would be easier to add mirrors than Gentoo: Gentoo requires about 256MB > of diskspace and T1, but Ruby would require much less space and any ADSL > uplink would be fast enough, provided there is an sufficient number of > mirrors. Thus the average Linux Ruby user could dedicate som diskspace if > they have a home server running. > Anyway, Gentoo proves that it is possible. All else being equal it should be > simpler for Ruby than for an entire bootstrapped OS. > This is just an idea for anyone to pick up. I'm not going to pick it up just now, but I'll second the thought. GenToo is a very nice (linux) distrubution, and ruby installs easily and runs quite well on it. Thanks for getting the idea going. > Mikkel -- Ferris McCormick