From: Richard Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2003-12-25T04:25:26+09:00
Subject: Re: RubyGems and dependencies


On Dec 24, 2003, at 11:34 AM, Jim Weirich wrote:

> Curt Hibbs wrote:
>
>> This is too simple. RubyGems should also check that the proper 
>> version is
>> installed.
>> I think that RubyGems should optionally allow the user to inform it 
>> of a
>> manual installation when a gem is not found, prompting the user for 
>> the need
>> information (like version number installed). That particular gem 
>> would then
>> be entered into its gem-database as having been installed manually for
>> future use.
>> Correspondingly, there should be an option to remove such a
>> manual-installation-entry from the RubyGems database.
>
> I was thinking along these same lines.

Well, when we were discussing this at RubyConf03 we decided that Gems 
would
run along side the existing mechanisms for installation/management of 
libraries.
In other words, the ruby/lib/1.8 and ruby/lib/site_ruby/1.8 would remain
as they are, and if you install a Ruby library with setup.rb or 
install.rb
it would operate just like now.  If you install a Gem, however, it 
installs in
a separate directory.  There is no 'database' per se.  There is a 
directory
of .gemspec YAML files that are checked and that forms your database of 
installed
Gems (of course, it supports multiple directories).

Chad and I have discussed getting all the standard libraries and 
forming a Gem or
set of Gems with them.  I think that would be quite cool, but, again, 
we are
not trying to replace the current LOAD_PATH, just augment it to make 
management
of libraries easier and more powerful.  Gems supports versioning, the 
standard
library system does not.  I mean, as a short term solution we could 
create a Gem
that picks up the Ruby version and you just do:

require_gem 'ruby', '> 1.8'

or something...of course that .gemspec would not actually modify the 
LOAD_PATH
as other Gems do, because Ruby's libraries are already in the 
LOAD_PATH.  If
you then place a dependency on ruby 1.8 (or 1.8.1, etc) you would be 
guaranteed
to have REXML, WEBrick, XMLRPC4R, etc.

Hm...now that I think of it, that is pretty sweet.  If folks thinks 
this is
good, it could be done quite quickly.

-rich

>
> -- 
> -- Jim Weirich       jweirich@one.net      http://onestepback.org
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> "Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
> not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)
>
>
>