From: Aredridel <aredridel@...>
Date: 2004-02-23T08:51:28+09:00
Subject: ANN: PLD RPMs of rake and ruby-dbi and a plea to packagers

I've just created packages (including .spec files to be used as
templates in other distros) of rake and ruby-dbi for the PLD GNU/Linux
distribution. They should be at the builders reasonably quickly, and
available for general consumption after that.

I also have a plea for package maintainers: Make your packages
distribution friendly.  Let the distribution build a package as a
non-root user -- supporting and documenting a DESTDIR variable,
"--destdir" config option or supporting "--prefix" in the install phase
is all fine. I'm tired of finding custom install.rb scripts, though,
that don't support it, and having to patch the packages before I commit
them.

Also, one thing to consider: Let the package install into
rubylibdir, not just sitelibdir.  Many distributions consider it good
form to put distro-supplied packages in a "System" directory -- for
perl, this is the vendor_perl branch; in ruby, this is the rubylibdir.
That leaves the sitelibdir open for site-local modifications.

Making packaging easy isn't just a nice idea, either: it gains you wider
distribution, wider exposure, and more people giving constructive
criticism. It may be as unpleasant as documentation, but that doesn't
mean it doesn't need to be done.

Ari