On Fri, May 11, 2001 at 04:40:00PM +0100, ruby-talk / ruby-lang.org wrote:
> > I am planning to release some Ruby modules and wonder if there are any
> > standard practices to follow when making the distribution, to make sure
> > that use of the module is as painless as possible.
> >
> > mkmf.rb is great, but does not solve all my problems, for example I
> > need to install both binary extensions and "pure" ruby modules. Also
> > there might be documentation and other things that needs to be compiled
> > and installed.
> >
> > Is there a standard practice for doing this? If not, which is the best
> > way? I can think of several:
> 
> I don't think there is really a "standard practice" for this, but you might
> want to take a look at "setup.rb" (should be listed in the RAA somewhere)
> which is aimed at multi-module distributions like the one you're describing.
> 

Just a small thought here.

If Ruby wants to build something as comprehensive as CPAN with its RAA,
there should definitely be some kind of "standard practice". In perlworld,
CPAN.pm makes use of the fact every module is installed through

	perl Makefile.pl && make && make test && make install

and in linuxland it is common to do

	./configure && make && make install

Shared "good practice" like this makes sharing and using of
knowledge/implementation much more efficient.

One does not have to use force on this issue, yet encouraging "good
practice" is not going to do any harm here.

Just my 2c

Renald