From: James Britt <james@...>
Date: 2003-04-07T02:02:41+09:00
Subject: Re: Call for standardised package installation procedure

> It would make my job a lot easier if just one were chosen, and perhaps
> made part of the standard Ruby distribution. A standard installation
> procedure would make it much quicker for me to add packages, and
> reduce everyone's reading of READMEs.
> 
> Personally, I vote for Minero Aoki's setup.rb:
>   http://i.loveruby.net/en/setup.html


Is it that all packages need to use the same installation code, or that they
all implement an installer that follows a known interface?  I would be
happy if every package had a script named install.rb that had a known
and consistent behavior.  Many apps already have such a script, but they don't all
do the same thing.  For some, running it without args will install the code.
In other cases, it spits back a terse message that that you call it with some
cryptic args.

> 
> Ideally I would like it to be a _requirement_ for all packages in the
> RAA to support the standard installation procedure (whatever that
> turns out to be).

It would be nice if even basic scripts included a scripted way to do installation, 
but I'm leery of requirements for inclusion.   Still, as others have mentioned, some
machine-readable bit that indicates the presence of a standard install method
would be a nice feature in the RAA.

I'd be interested to hear from folks as to:
   a) Why they do not include an installation script

and, more generally, 

   b) Why they do not list their code in the RAA at all (but do make it available 
       from, say, SourceForge or a personal home page)



James