Michael, I appreciate your viewpoint, but unfortunately it comes from one of inexperience. The only one here with experience of managing rubygems on an Ubuntu server is me. I have knocking on for 200 of them at Brightbox and 125 paying customers who disagree with your notion that they don't need Rubygems on Ubuntu. We have installed gems from source because the Ubuntu package is non-functional. So if there is anybody who understands Gems on Ubuntu it is me, and you haven't even bothered to speak to me about it.
gem installation from source is completely arbitrary, which you'd know if you worked with them. It compiles things on the fly. Might run rakefiles. Might run setup. Might pull in libraries. There is no standard layout. Gems exists, and is real. You can't use Rails without it. And quite frankly what gems does with my server is outside your policy remit as an Ubuntu developer. And that is the nub of the issue that needs addressing. Where does Ubuntu policy end and the System Administrators responsibility take over. Gem installs programs from a foreign repository. So does apt if you tell it to, and alien will create you an apt package from any RPM you fancy. Similarly the 'install' program will put files whereever I tell it. The 'ln' program will quite happily link /sbin/halt to /bin/ls if I tell it, and I can always chmod 4755 something if I want to have some real fun. And that's before we get onto the compilers which can even create kernel modules. Ubuntu policy ends at the point the program is installed. The package should ensure that the program runs correctly according to what the original developer intended and in a way that doesn't stand on the files of anything else. If I choose to install gems from the archive, then the ubuntu developers responsibility for system stabililty is merely to make sure that the program runs normally without standing on the files of anything else (as you would with a C compiler). What that program creates when you run it (as with a C compiler) is outside the Ubuntu developers remit. If the function of the program is to put things in the system path (as with the 'install' program) then it should install things in the system path. If this isn't clear in policy then it should be so. The programs and files created by installed programs are not the concern of the Ubuntu developers. -- rubygems bin in PATH potentially breaks other applications and violates all sense of decency in packaging. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/262063 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
