Packaging around debian [WAS: Re: Questions about MiKTeX package manager for Debian]
Just thought you would be interested to know this, the problem with
package managers in Debian is addressed also for perl, python and Java
(cpan, ezinstall or maven). See mail below, that was on
ubuntu-devel-discuss maillist.
Paul
Date: Wed, 20 Aug 2008 11:13:19 +0900
From: "Emmet Hikory" <emmet.hikory@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Ruby on Rails support in Intrepid - call for reviewers and
cheerleaders
Message-ID: <9bd2f8970808191913w50775131i1c4384ce411e23da@mail.gmail.com>
Indeed. The use of gems in this way on an end-user system is
bound to create problems, of the same sort (as previously pointed out)
of end-user use of cpan, ezinstall or maven. That said, policy
specifically doesn't forbid the use of such tools by end-users, and we
do have support for upstream behaviour for all of cpan, ezinstall,
and maven. Creating correct upstream behaviour for gems as well, in a
manner that doesn't damage the areas typically managed by the
packaging system, is a good thing.
Of course, such support cannot be used to build policy-compliant
packages, and so any gem that is packaged and has dependencies will
require either a patched gem install to handle it, or an alternate
build system to be put in place. Ideally, for a given release, all
interesting gems would be packaged and be immediately available for
use: further users would be encouraged to use the gems from the
repositories (as is done for perl, python and Java).
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