From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2003-05-07T05:19:50+09:00
Subject: Package management [was Re: A wishlist for a "Ruby Standard	Library"]

> Same here.  But I think that part of the reason we're moving toward a 
> 'fat' distribution (rubysumo) is because we haven't been able to agree on 
> an installation standard.  There are solutions out there (raainstall and 
> rpkg come to mind) but as a community we can't seem to agree on which 
> system to use and on how to deal with dependencies.  There are proposals 
> out there and in some cases people have written 'proof-of-concept' code, 
> but nothing much happens in this department.

What if one takes the same tack that package-managed distributions took
-- apply the packaging externally?

One doesn't have to have the author's explicit consent, usually, to make
a more easily installable package.  What if someone just took some
initiative and packaged as many extensions as they could find and
published the location?

This begs the problem of getting everyone to use a particular package
standard, and also, if done right (a pristine-source-plus-patches)
model, makes obvious common problems and flaws in original packages, and
all it takes to make them "official" is to get the original author to
apply the patch so the packager doesn't have to.