[DRE-maint] RubyGems Debian package

[michael greenly]

It was actually me that originally steered that thread in the wrong
direction.  I was tired when I posted.  I should of kept my mouth shut.

anyway...

I'll agree that Austin Ziegler is an anti-debian zealot but he's not
relavant, he's not involved with RubyGems.

Eric Hodel on the other hand who is involved with RubyGems does seem open to
evaluating patches and I think RubyGems is mature enough now that a workable
solution is possible.

I'd like to take a look at this problem but the thing I need the most is a
better understanding of Debian's Ruby packaging.

Obviously I can start with the existing rubygems package but I was wondering
if there were any other resource available?


On Nov 21, 2007 9:24 PM, Lucas Nussbaum <lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> 1/ Mailing everybody like that is a bad practice. I'm dropping everybody
> except the pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers mailing list. (others should read
> the list anyway).
>
> 2/ Please read
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?ordering=normal;archive=both;src=rubygems;repeatmerged=1
> Some of the issues are mentioned there.
>
> On 21/11/07 at 15:39 -0600, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:
> > There have been some rather heavy complaining on ruby-talk lately
> > about how Debian packages rubygems.
> > I don't know if any of you are on that, and I'm not involved in
> > rubygems development, but it's a rather integral part of ruby
> > programming.
> > It seems the key concern is the fact that RubyGems was modified
> > without sending changes back to the rubygems developers,
>
> Changes made to software packaged in Debian can be found easily, and
> AFAIK, nobody asked for them.
>
> > and that they
> > were made in ways that instead of making rubygems work with the way
> > Debian installs RubyGems you made a version of RubyGems that only
> > works on Debian systems.
>
> Please clarify. We packaged rubygems. Surely, the Debian Rubygems
> package only works on Debian systems.
>
> > Specifically, a number of issues seem to stem from this:
> > Debian added a hard-coded hack RubyGems to use /var/lib instead of
> > using GEM_PATH and GEM_HOME.
> >
> > "it is regrettable that Debian didn't instead add GEM_HOME to /
> > etc/profile (or equivalent)"-from Ruby-talk
>
> Modifying /etc/profile is much uglier. Debian packages are not allowed
> to do that. More than 20000 packages in Debian work properly without
> this hack.
>
> > And in case you're wondering, RubyGems developers are aware that
> > "environment variables is a lousy way to keep around configuration for
> > programs"
> >
> > However, that's the way RubyGems works, and changing it is going to
> > cause problems.
>
> Ah? Which problems? Rubygems was badly designed in the first place, and
> now they try to impose their bad design to everybody. Nice.
>
> Seriously, I started a discussion on ruby-talk recently about those
> issues. I mostly got flaming replies from Austin Ziegler, who seems to
> only be interested in Debian bashing. I haven't seen the slightest sign
> that Rubygems developers would be willing to improve Rubygems to make
> Distributions' life easier (and Debian isn't the only distribution
> annoyed by this).
>
> I totally lost motivation in working on those issues, and partly on
> working on Ruby in general, since all the development decisions are
> taken on a mailing list in japanese. I don't see the situation in Debian
> improving any time soon.
> --
> | Lucas Nussbaum
> | lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
> | jabber: lucas at nussbaum.fr             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
>
> _______________________________________________
> Pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers mailing list
> Pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers at lists.alioth.debian.org
>
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>



-- 
Michael Greenly
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