On Wed, Apr 09, 2003 at 03:34:49AM +0900, Bill Kelly wrote:
> > > So many Ruby modules are platform-independent... It just seems
> > > whacky to me from an authoring standpoint to be wanting to
> > > release the latest version of my module, but telling people, well,
> > > you'll have to wait until somebody "ports" my platform-independent
> > > module to your specific OS's package manager before you have a
> > > convenient way to install it.
> > 
> > AIUI, the point is to have an intermediate layer that takes care of
> > all the platform-specificness for you, precisely so you don't have
> > that problem.  You just release your package with support for this
> > layer, and then it takes care of any platform-specific weirdnesses
> > (building .debs, .rpms, .whateverwindowsuses, etc.)

Thanks to Eric Schwartz for summarizing my proposal so clearly :) 
 
> Ah.  OK, thanks.... In that case, I propose that the first
> translation to be implemented ought to be one to massage this
> intermediate layer metadata into whatever format the platform-
> independent Ruby installer needs.  (Ha ha only serious... :)

We still have no such independent Ruby package management system. The
closest we have now is AFAIK rpkg, but that works on Un*x only.

I hypothesize that creating such a beast would take longer than making
something able to use the systems already in use.

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batsman dot geo at yahoo dot com

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	-- Seen in a translation