Re: How to handle libraries bundled with either Ruby 1.8 or Ruby 1.9 (was "Debian Ruby packaging changes")
On 21/06/11 at 14:13 -0700, Antonio Terceiro wrote:
> Lucas Nussbaum escreveu isso aí:
> > > That's a question that has been popping up now and then, and probably we
> > > need to reach a consensus on the Ruby team.
> > >
> > > 1) There is a lot of cases in which libraries were bundled together with
> > > Ruby 1.8, and were dropped in Ruby 1.9. Examples:
> > >
> > > * test-unit: Ruby 1.9 dropped test-unit, and added minitest. minitest
> > > has some compatibility with test-unit, but it does not implement
> > > everything. This way some people are maintaining it as a separate
> > > package: http://rubygems.org/gems/test-unit
> > > * soap4r: Ruby 1.9 dropped it, and it is now being maintained as a
> > > separate package: https://rubygems.org/gems/soap4r
> > > But it seems that not even this is compatible with Ruby 1.9, so
> > > there are forks claiming this support.
> > >
> > > 2) Another case is software that was not bundled with Ruby 1.8, but was
> > > bundled with Ruby 1.9. Examples:
> > >
> > > * rubygems
> > > * rake
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > I see to ways to go with this:
> > >
> > > a) Always let the bundled version take priority. For example, with Ruby
> > > 1.8 has a bundled version of foo, then the ruby-foo package only
> > > installs files for Ruby 1.9 (and vice versa).
> > >
> > > * Pro: bundled library behaves as it does in upstream Ruby
> > > * Con: bundled does not evolve much
> > >
> > > b) Always make the non-bundled version have priority over any bundled
> > > versions. This way we would make for example the ruby-soap4r package be
> > > used for both Ruby versions, even though there is a bundled version for
> > > Ruby 1.8.
> > >
> > > * Pro: library works consistently across Ruby versions.
> > > * Con: non-bundled version (potentially) behaves different than
> > > bundled version.
> > >
> > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> > >
> > > We have been handling case 2) with solution a). Both rubygems and rake
> > > install files only for Ruby 1.8.
> > >
> > > AFAICT we are starting to handle case 1) now.
> > >
> > > AFAICT the Ruby community at large uses solution b). For example, if
> > > some package depends on rake, rubygems will just install it and the
> > > rubygems-installed version will take over the bundled version. Even
> > > Rubygems itself can be installed from source on Ruby 1.9 and take over
> > > the bundled version (and my guess is that people do that).
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I'm in favor of doing (b) for (1). In the most extreme case, it means
> > dropping the library from the ruby1.8 source package, and (maybe) depend
> > on the non-bundled version.
> >
> > In the case of soap4r, we ship a patched version in the ruby1.8 package,
> > because soap4r shipped in ruby1.8 is unmaintained upstream.
> > It would be better to switch to a maintained upstream version instead.
>
> What about 2), e.g. rake and rubygems? Do you think we could always
> default to the non-bundled version for them as well?
It's a bit tricky. For example, rdoc 1 (shipped in Ruby 1.8) is very
different from rdoc 2 & 3 (shipped in 1.9). Also, while it's easy to
override libraries using the vendor_dir precedence, it's not as simple
to override executables: basically, we would need to drop the
executables from the interpreter, and depend on the non-bundled version.
For rubygems, it's very non-trivial.
Maybe that's something that should be raised on ruby-core@ to see what
they think? Do you want to prepare a mail?
- Lucas
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