Hi, I would like to point-out some shortcomings of the current .gemspec auto-build feature, and a possible path toward a better system in the future.
First let me say I think it's great that you offer this feature. Clearly it is very useful to many a Ruby developer, including myself. The issues I see with it however are: 1. Can't be used to offer platform gems (binary gems). Some gems need to be compiled and for Window especially it is better to offer a platform gem b/c many Windows users do not have the proper build system in place. 2. The developer lacks control over what gems are made available. Eg. If a developer pushes a version for which a gem is then made, then realizes "oh my god" it has a very bad bug, there's no easy way to withdraw that version. Not to mention just keeping things tidy and being able to remove versions that are no longer supported whatsoever. 3. How will GitHub handle other potential packages systems in the future? For Ruby or otherwise. Yes, we are Ruby fans, but I'm sure you want other languages to have similar support too if possible. So I gave it some thought and I think a potential solution for improvement in the future is to allow the developer to designate a "distribution folder" in their repository in which the packages can be stored. GitHub can still automatically generate the .gem if the developer wants. Or, they can just build their own gem(s) and use git to push it to the repo. Since git is so efficient and the .gem has to be stored somewhere anyway, it's really not a big deal to have it in the repo. This way the developer can remove gems he/she no longer wants to support at his/her discretion, as well as add platform gems if need be. It also opens GitHub up for supporting other distributed packages systems in the future, such as Debians' apt-get. Hope you find this idea useful. And thanks again for this great service. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "GitHub" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/github?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
