On Sun, Jul 31, 2011 at 08:23:00AM -0700, jvictor wrote: > does that mean that my OS-X ruby install has been messed up?
Maybe. Probably. If you have other applications or system components that depended on the particular configuration of Ruby that shipped with OS X, they may be broken now. Does that matter? Depends on whether those other components are being used. > I just reinstalled it a few days back and hate it when the libs are broken > :'( Whether you're on Linux, OS X, *BSD, or what have you, it's a good rule of thumb to avoid messing with the system packages. If you're going to upgrade or otherwise tinker with things that came with the OS, use the vendor's packaging system -- "apt-get" on Debian, "port" on FreeBSD, etc -- because the vendor will have done their best to snoop out and deal with compatibility problems. For OS X, where Apple does not support a public a la carte packaging system, just don't mess with system components. Playing it safe is perhaps even more important with languages such as Python and Perl which are used comparatively often in configuration and installation scripts and other applications. If you overwrite your system Python on Linux, stuff is almost guaranteed to break; Perl 5 has been a little more stable over time, but not stable enough that you can upgrade by a minor version and expect everything to keep working. The more popular that Ruby becomes as a system scripting language, the more important it will become to observe the same caution. By the way, SD Ruby... I was quite surprised when I went to some classes organized by members of SD Ruby where noobs were instructed to simply upgrade their system Ruby installs. As argued above, that's poor practice, and I hope that it's something which was limited to a few misguided locals and not standard operating procedure in the larger Ruby community. Marvin Humphrey -- SD Ruby mailing list [email protected] http://groups.google.com/group/sdruby
