Prashant Srinivasan wrote: > > We proposed Ruby and Rails to coexist in the same package. This is
I don't like that idea much. A package should deliver one unit of functionality. Ruby can be used without Rails so these are logically independent. Thinking longer term, we'd like to see the "Indiana" package repository to be as rich as, say, Debian's. Do you propose that all ruby modules be delivered in that single ruby package? Rails might be one of the most popular but it is not the only one. % gem list -r | wc 6992 29255 222386 I didn't count but the descriptions seem to average about 5 lines, so that's on the order of a thousand gem packages. Do they all eventually go into SUNWruby? > You can upgrade your Rails installation > with it(one line command, similar to the blastwave pkg-get) without > having to go through the relatively tedious process of installing a > Solaris package. Don't forget Indiana packaging is around the corner, need to plan ahead for that, so installing these Solaris packages will be the same one-liner we're used to with apt-get, yum, etc. > So, if Rails is delivered as a separate package, the end user, when s/he > wants to upgrade rails, will bypass the Solaris packaging(and use the > Ruby gems packaging mechanism) which will result in a rails installation > which is a different version than the version that our package advertises. > > Do we see this side effect as a problem? > > If yes, I'd venture a single package for Ruby and Rails, such that end > users can upgrade rails using rubygems. They would only need to upgrade > our Ruby package when they come to the point where their rails or other > infrastructure needs a new Ruby build. I don't see how the single vs. split packaging changes anything, can you expand? If the user installs Rails from a Sun package (whether it is the combo Ruby+modules package or by installing Ruby pkg & Rails pkgs) and then tries to upgrade using gem, there's going to be confusion either way (either overwritten or duplicate files, depending on layout). Here's a topic IMO you need to address for the ARC proposal: should you ship Rails at all, or just package Ruby + gems and get the rest of the modules via gem (automated and/or manual)? Or ship supported packages and discourage gem? Or adapt gem? (Also remember that /usr cannot be assumed to be writable, may be read-only filesystem.) Here's some useful discussion from debian (see rubygems at the bottom): http://pkg-ruby-extras.alioth.debian.org/rubygems.html -- Jyri J. Virkki - jyri.virkki at sun.com - Sun Microsystems
