[DRE-maint] ignoring jruby

[Lucas Nussbaum]

(ccing debian-ruby@, it sounds like a better place to discuss this)

On 20/02/08 at 03:00 -0600, Daniel Brumbaugh Keeney wrote:
> I'm trying to understand the proper policies for creating a Debian
> package. What I don't understand is that pure ruby1.8 libraries can
> run on both JRuby and ruby1.8 interchangeably, and yet JRuby cannot be
> substituted for ruby1.8, there is no virtual package that packages can
> require for either implementation. What is the plan to handle this?

Currently, there are no plans. The way forward would probably be
something like what java people do: several interpreters could be
provided, and the user could switch between them using alternatives, or
by naming the desired interpreter directly.

However, this requires quite a lot of work and coordination, and is
probably something we will work on for lenny+1. (having a nice solution
to this would also solve the "how are we going to migrate to
ruby1.9/2.0/" problem)

I dont think that anybody has a clear view of all the issues that have
to be solved, but some of them are:
- where do we put third-party libs so that they are accessible by
  ruby1.8, jruby and ruby1.9? (duplicating code for each interpreter
  isn't sane)
- jruby doesn't support native extensions. what about software that
  requires native extensions?
- gems: jruby is dealt with using a "java" target in gems
- where do we put the bytecode?

A good starting point would be to investigate precisely what is being
done for java and python (python has different interpreter versions, and
also other interpreters, such as pysco)

I'll propose a BOF about all the Ruby issues in debconf. Co-organizers
wanted :)
-- 
| Lucas Nussbaum
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