Re: Re: About the Ruby packages split: a concrete proposal

[Stuart Rackham <srackham@methods.co.nz>]

Firstly, a big thank you to Paul and collaborators for creating ruby-core
package.

I whole heartedly support any move towards a single installable
'ruby' package that installs everything that the pristine Ruby sources
would install.

Can I add my two cents worth and suggest that 'ruby' also include:

- ri. It's part of the standard Ruby 1.8.2 tarball install as well as
  being incredibly useful.

- ruby1.8-dev. Without the development headers Ruby extension
  libraries and rubygems that contain extension libraries fail to
  install.

- rubygems. Increasingly this is the ruby packaging system of choice,
  I noted that there's already an unofficial rubygems package.

I'm a Ruby developer (mostly using the Ruby
on Rails framework at the moment), I'm not a Debian packaging expert.

Recently I decided to give Debian a go after years with RedHat,
everything went smoothly up until I started trying to get a working
Ruby development environment.  I was about to reformat my hard disk
drive in frustration and revert to Fedora when I discovered your
posting. It's not that Ruby is, or should be,  inherently hard to
install:

- On MS Windows the One-Click Ruby Installer installs everything, just
  add Ruby Gems and download your favorite gems.

- On Redhat 9.0 and Fedora Core 1 just Compile the pristine Ruby 1.8.2
  tarball (./configure && make install), install Ruby Gems and
  download your favorite gems.

Thanks again for your good work.


Cheers, Stuart
--
Stuart Rackham