Re: Ruby packaging in wheezy: gem2deb, new policy, etc.
On 18/01/11 at 12:32 -0600, Gunnar Wolf wrote:
> Lucas Nussbaum dijo [Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 08:25:33AM +0100]:
> > 5) Something I forgot to add is "dependencies on ruby interpreters".
> > With gem2deb, we will get a single ruby-foo package that is supposed to
> > work with all Ruby implementations (ruby1.8, ruby1.9.1, jruby,
> > rubinius).
> >
> > I think that this ruby-foo package should depend on a "ruby-interpreter"
> > virtual package, so that all users can install the ruby interpreter of
> > their choice.
> > And that each ruby interpreter should provide "ruby-interpreter".
> > Additionally, we should move to using alternatives to select the ruby
> > implementation. After that:
> > - applications willing to force the use of ruby1.8 should use
> > /usr/bin/ruby1.8 in shebang
> > - applications willing to use the selected ruby implementation (whatever
> > it is) should use /usr/bin/ruby
>
> How is the compatibility between implementations right now? If a
> package works across interpreters (it should be human-tested! Maybe
> running its test suite with the different available interpreters would
> do, although I don't want to do it for every uploaded package...),
Why wouldn't you want to do it with every available interpreter? That's
what is implemented in gem2deb currently.
> it
> can depend on ruby-interpreter. If it breaks, say, under jruby, it
> could depend on ruby-traditional | rubinius. It would be a win and
> would as you said, encourage advance and homogeneization of the
> implementations.
Well, if we use alternatives to select the ruby interpreter, a complex
dependency scheme doesn't bring us anything, since it would still be
possible for the users to shoot themselves in the foot.
> > 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).
>
> In my case -and again, this speaks of sloppy maintainership- I have
> several libraries built for 1.8 and not 1.9 because it was not
> supported when I first prepared the packages... But that are possibly
> compatible today. And if they are not, maybe we should start bugging
> the authors.
After what I've seen when working on gem2deb, I don't think that the
situation is much better now. But I think that Debian could play a big
role as a "sanitizer" for the Ruby community.
- Lucas
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