Re: Ruby packaging in wheezy: gem2deb, new policy, etc.
On 19/01/11 at 01:05 -0700, Joshua Timberman wrote:
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>
> Ohai!
>
> On Jan 18, 2011, at 11:32 AM, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
>
> >> The default ruby version should still be 1.8 at least for some
> >> time, given that most libraries are not supporting 1.9 yet.
> >
> > Hmm... given that we would probably target now+2yr for Wheezy, and
> > given that Ruby devs are already talking about 1.9 as the stable
> > branch (with 1.8 as the maintenance branch), maybe we should think
> > about moving to default 1.9. Packages would still be built for 1.8,
> > but this would encourage us to push any incompatibilities to be
> > fixed (at or in colaboration with the upstream authors).
>
> The current stable release of Ruby itself is 1.9(.2) - that should
> absolutely be the minimum supported version of Ruby on Debian. I
> hypothesize that one of the reasons that library developers have not
> moved forward with 1.9 support is because the two most popular
> distribution families are not shipping 1.9.x by default (Debian and
> Red Hat + derivatives, clearly).
>
> As an upstream, Opscode does work to make sure that Chef and other
> related libraries we support work on both Ruby 1.8 and 1.9. At some
> point we may support other interpreters, as well.
If we (Debian):
- switch to alternatives to manage the default ruby version
- make sure to try to support 1.8 and 1.9 in libraries
It will be very easy to switch from 1.8 as a default to 1.9.
According to what I saw, we are not in a position to switch to 1.9 as a
default *yet*. However, having all the infrastructure ready to do the
switch, we could do the switch in a few months when the major libs/apps
have proven that they work with 1.9.
- Lucas
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