From: Eric Schwartz Date: 2003-04-09T03:15:52+09:00 Subject: Re: Call for standardised package installation procedure "Bill Kelly" writes: > So many Ruby modules are platform-independent... It just seems > whacky to me from an authoring standpoint to be wanting to > release the latest version of my module, but telling people, well, > you'll have to wait until somebody "ports" my platform-independent > module to your specific OS's package manager before you have a > convenient way to install it. AIUI, the point is to have an intermediate layer that takes care of all the platform-specificness for you, precisely so you don't have that problem. You just release your package with support for this layer, and then it takes care of any platform-specific weirdnesses (building .debs, .rpms, .whateverwindowsuses, etc.) > "Standardizing" on a platform-specific installation procedure for > Ruby seems to me somewhere between ironic and oxymoronic.... Standardizing on a translation layer is a Good Thing(tm). .debs and ..rpms can be put on network servers, and installed from a common repository, instead of having to compile and install them on each individual machine. This is a big win in several contexts (large-scale networks, clusters), and not a loss in other ones. Package authors get the benefit of a standard installation scheme, package users get the benefit of packages which fit their OS's package management scheme. Seems like a win all around to me. -=Eric -- Come to think of it, there are already a million monkeys on a million typewriters, and Usenet is NOTHING like Shakespeare. -- Blair Houghton.