Comment 5 for bug 34840

On 8/21/06, Ralf Nieuwenhuijsen <email address hidden> wrote:
> It sounds like philosophical issues. In which case we either need:
> - ubuntu packages for alle the different rails & ruby add-ons, without gems
> - onofficial packages for gems (perhaps in universe, for all I care)
>
> Although, since it isn't a liscense issue, I do feel debian/ubuntu
> shouldn't push their architecture that much. Freedom as in free beer,
> freedom as in free free speech, FREEDOM AS IN CHOICE.
>
> Its their choice not to _support_ it. But can/should they really _ban_
> it? Single it out and say 'you can't come to our party' Can't we just
> put it in universe? Or do they have to 'like' all the software there as
> well? Should it even be about this? I'm confused.

Yes, it's all about choice, yours, mine, and theirs.

As I understand it, the gem architecture just doesn't fit the debian
'contract' which requires among other things adherence to debian's
standard for file system layout. It's insistence on the debian
standard for debian packages which is the key behind debian's
reputation for seamless package maintainance and system upgrades.

There are quite a few debian packages whose upstream code is modified
by the debian maintainer to place things in the right places. Often
this is just a matter of configuring the build. I haven't looked into
the matter in detail, but I think that those who make decisions about
packaging ruby for debian are of the opinion that reconfiguring gems
this way is either impossible or just too hard.

Now, for our freedom. Just because software isn't packaged for
debian, doesn't mean that it can't be installed on a debian system
like Ubuntu. I've installed both Ruby and rubygems from source on my
Ubuntu machines, and although I didn't attempt to put the artifacts
where they would be for a debian package, I did configure them to go
into places which would be safe from being clobbered by maintainence
of the packaged software on the machine. Places like /usr/local are
save havens.

And there's sometimes a benefit to doing installs outside of packages.
 Sometimes although debian package upgrades don't clobber the file
system, they do mess you up when the package maintainer doesn't
understand upstream upgrade requirements well enough. I've got a
plone site on one of my machines, which died when I upgraded from
Ubuntu Breezy to Dapper a few weeks ago, which upgraded zope and
plone, and I'm still trying to figure out how to get it back.

Once I recover it, I'm looking to replace zope/plone with a rails-based CMS.

--
Rick DeNatale

My blog on Ruby
http://talklikeaduck.denhaven2.com/