[DRE-maint] RubyGems Debian package

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Hi,

1/ Mailing everybody like that is a bad practice. I'm dropping everybody
except the pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers mailing list. (others should read
the list anyway).

2/ Please read
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?ordering=normal;archive=both;src=rubygems;repeatmerged=1
Some of the issues are mentioned there.

On 21/11/07 at 15:39 -0600, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:
> There have been some rather heavy complaining on ruby-talk lately
> about how Debian packages rubygems.
> I don't know if any of you are on that, and I'm not involved in
> rubygems development, but it's a rather integral part of ruby
> programming.
> It seems the key concern is the fact that RubyGems was modified
> without sending changes back to the rubygems developers,

Changes made to software packaged in Debian can be found easily, and
AFAIK, nobody asked for them.

> and that they
> were made in ways that instead of making rubygems work with the way
> Debian installs RubyGems you made a version of RubyGems that only
> works on Debian systems.

Please clarify. We packaged rubygems. Surely, the Debian Rubygems
package only works on Debian systems.

> Specifically, a number of issues seem to stem from this:
> Debian added a hard-coded hack RubyGems to use /var/lib instead of
> using GEM_PATH and GEM_HOME.
> 
> "it is regrettable that Debian didn't instead add GEM_HOME to /
> etc/profile (or equivalent)"-from Ruby-talk

Modifying /etc/profile is much uglier. Debian packages are not allowed
to do that. More than 20000 packages in Debian work properly without
this hack.

> And in case you're wondering, RubyGems developers are aware that
> "environment variables is a lousy way to keep around configuration for
> programs"
> 
> However, that's the way RubyGems works, and changing it is going to
> cause problems.

Ah? Which problems? Rubygems was badly designed in the first place, and
now they try to impose their bad design to everybody. Nice.

Seriously, I started a discussion on ruby-talk recently about those
issues. I mostly got flaming replies from Austin Ziegler, who seems to
only be interested in Debian bashing. I haven't seen the slightest sign
that Rubygems developers would be willing to improve Rubygems to make
Distributions' life easier (and Debian isn't the only distribution
annoyed by this).

I totally lost motivation in working on those issues, and partly on
working on Ruby in general, since all the development decisions are
taken on a mailing list in japanese. I don't see the situation in Debian
improving any time soon.
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
| lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
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