[DRE-maint] Let's discuss big changes in Ruby packaging for squeeze+1

[Deepak Tripathi]

Hi Lucas,

I totally support your idea. Also i have some suggestion.

1) I have raised ITP for dh_make_ruby[1] long back to prepare this, but
somehow it was available with other upstream, I haven't looked existing one
so still not clear about this that do we need to use existing one or need to
prepare from scratch.

2) I have already created a script repack.sh to convert gemtotar format. we
can use this (if it is not buggy). its available in svn[2]. let me know your
input.


[1]http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=436537
[2]
http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-ruby-extras/trunk/libdataobjects-ruby/debian/repack.sh

Thanks
Deepak


On Thu, Apr 22, 2010 at 1:37 AM, Lucas Nussbaum <lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net>wrote:

> [ Please continue the discussion on debian-ruby@ ]
>
> Hi,
>
> I'd like to restart a discussion on a set of changes in ruby packaging.
> The goals are:
> - to find a way to deal with the popularity of rubygems.
> - to simplify ruby packaging, so we can keep up with the number of
>  popular/useful gems
> - to be able to support several ruby interpreters at the same time,
>  preparing the switch to 1.9.X
> All those changes are for squeeze+1, but we can start discussing them
> now.
>
> I'd like to propose the following actions.
>
> 0) We try to provide as much support as possible for all ruby interpreters
>   (well, at least 1.8 and 1.9.1, but maybe also jruby). However, we decide
>   on a default version (1.8 currently) that all libraries must support.
>
> 1) We base our packaging on rubygems. This doesn't mean that we package
> gems
> directly. But we take upstream gems, convert them to .orig.tar.gz (easy),
> and
> then apply our Debian-specific tools. That allows use to keep the
> maximum flexibility of what we can do with the source (patching, etc).
>
> 2) Instead of installing to /usr/lib/ruby/1.{8,9.1}, we install to:
>  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/ <= libraries that support all versions
>                              of the interpreter
>  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.8 <= libraries that only support 1.8
>  /usr/lib/ruby/vendor_ruby/1.9.1 <= libraries that only support 1.9.1
> That allows to make a better difference between the stdlib and the
> third-party libraries.
>
> 3) Instead of providing several libfoo-ruby1.{8,9.1} packages, we
> provide only one when it is possible (pure ruby packages), named
> libfoo-ruby.
> When this is not possible (case of packages that contain native
> extensions),
> we continue to provide several binary packages libfoo-ruby1{8,9.1}.
>
> 4) When packages provide executable scripts, we either :
> - provide them for the various Ruby implementations that we support,
>  using 1.8, 1.9.1 suffixes. (case for development tools)
> - or provide them only for the default version of ruby (case of normal
>  applications)
>
> 5) Regarding test suites, we should really try to execute them during the
>   build (for every ruby implementation), as this will allow to detect
>   regressions.
>
> TODO items, provided we agree on the above:
>
> - determine how to deal with Depends, especially in the case of
>  a pure-ruby library requiring a native extension.
>
> - decide if we want to keep our current cdbs-based packaging system, or
>  if we want to switch to dh. That would be a nice opportunity.
>  We might want to really fork setup.rb, too.
>
> - write a set of scripts to package from gems, including:
>  + gem2tgz - convert gem to tgz, saving the gem metadata somewhere
>  + dh_make_ruby - prepare a source package, making use of the gem metadata
>  + script to watch gems on rubygems.org (for debian/watch)
>  + various QA scripts, including one to grep for "require 'rubygems'"
>
> Some data:
> I've looked at the top 200 gems on rubygems.org.
> 194 of them provide a lib/ directory, so they probably support
> setup.rb-based
> installation. Of the remaining 6 packages, only 2 don't provide ext/, and
> 1 has a good reason for that.
> 55 use "require 'rubygems'" in lib/ somewhere.
> 112 have a test/ directory, 49 have a spec/ directory.
> --
> | Lucas Nussbaum
> | lucas at lucas-nussbaum.net   http://www.lucas-nussbaum.net/ |
> | jabber: lucas at nussbaum.fr             GPG: 1024D/023B3F4F |
>
>
> --
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> Archive: http://lists.debian.org/20100421200717.GA32010@xanadu.blop.info
>
>


-- 
Deepak Tripathi
E3 71V3 8Y C063 (We Live By Code)
http://deepaktripathi.blogspot.com
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