RE: [Fxruby-users] [Q] Alternatives to the source RubyGem format?

[<ly...@kn...>]

On Fri, 9 Jul 2004 12:00:43 -0700, "Oliver Smith" <ol...@mo...>
wrote :

> I just tried installing FXRuby 1.2 on Windows, and thought I would play
> devil's advocate. :)

Someone's got to! ;)

> I just don't see how this is anything but a step backwards on Windows.  Who
> would want to go from double-clicking to typing obscure commands in a DOS
> box?

Yes, this is an excellent point. Of course, we could try to turn this into a
positive suggestion (feature request) for the RubyGems developers; but
that's a side point.

> ... Plus there is no obvious option for choosing an install
> directory and the output of the installer did not even tell me where it put
> the FXRuby 1.2 files.  With the old .exe installer I see a helpful screen
> telling me where the files will go, and an easy option to change the
> destination directory.

I'm guessing that the RubyGems developers' argument would be that they
intentionally don't give you a choice for the installation directory. That
is, Gems are always installed in a standard location in the Ruby directory
structure so that you don't have to *care* where they were installed. I can
see a parallel with how I use RPMs under Linux; I rarely list their contents
to see what files are going where, I just install the RPM and know that it's
going to be installed in the "right place."

> Plus, no DOS box, no installing third party
> programs, no reading help files, no outdated zip files and an obvious way to
> uninstall the program.

I think I follow you on most of these. But by "installing third party
programs", are you referring to the requirement of first installing RubyGems
itself? That is certainly a drawback for now, but at the last Ruby
conference Matz expressed a strong interest in getting this into the
official Ruby code base as soon as it's mature. I doubt that will be in time
for the pending 1.8.2 release, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it make it
in there by the end of the year.

> Of course Lyle, in reality I'm grateful for the work you're doing so
> whichever way you want to do it is the right way.  I'm just taking the
> grouchy consistency-advocate's view. :)

Thanks, but please don't apologize. I think you raise some excellent points
and these are some things I hadn't considered. Now that you've brought it
up, I'm wondering how hard it would be to in fact "wrap" a binary gem as a
Win32 installer-like executable (and create an uninstaller for it as well).
If done right one could still retain the advantages of RubyGems in terms of
packaging and versioning, but lose the unfriendliness of the command-line
interface.