On Mar 17, 2010, at 14:32, Lucas Nussbaum wrote: > I hope this clarifies the status of Ruby in Debian and Ubuntu a bit. > Also, it would be great if all the sarcasm and nasty comments on this > list each time someone brings up Ruby and Debian or Ubuntu could be > reduced a bit. I am working on providing Ruby packages in Debian and > Ubuntu as a volunteer, and don't really enjoy all the flames I get on > this list. Constructive criticism is welcomed (preferably as bug > reports), but is very rare here, unfortunately. Unfortunately I end up having to handle most of the issues that Debian = creates due to their splitting up Ruby into multiple packages because of = the way it affects Ruby and RubyGems. I can reduce my support load and = increase my free time by saying "install all of Ruby and RubyGems by = hand on Debian and Ubuntu". Once RubyGems is installed it's fairly = smooth sailing on Debian unless you install a gem that needs to compile = against missing headers. It's especially frustrating when features are added to RubyGems that = have the express goal of helping Debian and Ubuntu are either ignored = (rubygems/defaults/operating_system, added in 1.2.0) or are rejected for = what seems to boil down to policy reasons (Neil Wilson's work in = http://bugs.debian.org/403407). When you say things like: > The problem is that the upstream rubygems developers don't care, and = that it's impossible to change that without their cooperation. I don't see how we (that work on RubyGems) could possibly have ever = cared if you're not subscribed to the mailing list where you would raise = those concerns nor have you filed any bugs with any of these concerns. We certainly can't cooperate when you don't bother to raise any issues = in the places we're looking for them. PS: Not taking advantage of rubygems/defaults/operating_system is especially = odd to me as it would allow upgrades of RubyGems to continue to work = while maintaining Debian's customizations. Last I checked the only = changes made to RubyGems by Debian could be encapsulated in this one = file. PPS: Maybe you get so much sarcasm and nasty comments because people are = genuinely frustrated with what Debian provides by default. Maybe = installing ruby-full by default instead of the minimal ruby will reduce = your frustrations. Oftentimes people are following instructions they found on the web that = were written for non-Debian/Ubuntu. On OS X, BSD, and most other Linux = versions those instructions will work without modification, but since = Debian is subtly different they end up coming here and we end up = answering the same questions over and over, which will inevitably lead = to us making sarcastic, nasty comments. =46rom maintaining RubyGems I've learned that maintaining a large, = popular open-source library requires a thick skin and the ability to say = "yeah, what I'm doing is not what people want" sometimes.=