M. Edward (Ed) Borasky wrote:
> In most cases, the dependencies, both inside the Ruby infrastructure and
> in the interactions between Ruby and the compilers and operating
> systems, are identical -- the *only* thing that differs is the physical
> format of the package and whether or not compilable language components
> are pre-compiled or not. And at least for Linux, the same is true for
> Perl, Python, PHP, Tcl/Tk, R, LaTeX and probably lots of others. A --
> perhaps "standardized" is a better word than "universal" -- package
> management system would free up developers and users to focus on
> domain-specific value creation and not worry about packaging. It's all
> automated anyhow. That's part of my complaint -- the numerous package
> systems also consume developer resources in developing and maintaining
> the automation infrastructure.

  You seem to forget one thing: language-specific packagings are in
principle cross-platform (including macos,*nix,win...), which is
obviously not the case of distribution-specific packaging. You'll never
get a global packaging solution, just like no language will be the
ultimate solution for all programming.

  Maybe what we're missing are good conversion tools ? Say, a gem2deb
program that would get most of the debian developer's job done before
the final touch ?

	Vince

-- 
Vincent Fourmond, PhD student
http://vincent.fourmond.neuf.fr/