On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 6:51 AM, Amanda Waite <Amanda.Waite at sun.com> wrote: > Prashant Srinivasan wrote: > > Jyri, these are good points, and this(integrating Rails into Solaris) is > > a problem with no solution that satisfies all packaging mechanisms/our > > goals. > > > > What we wanted to(and still do) achieve when we set out on this effort > > was to package Rails + dependencies to present the end user with a > > pre-configured set of components for Rails + dependencies + some > > critical components like db connectivity. Installing these components > > manually doesn't present a difficult proposition to the end user(ie., > > utterances of "gem install rails", "gem install mysql > > --with-mysql-dir=/usr/mysql/5.0", and/or "gem install postgres"), on the > > other hand, if your target is a Ruby end user, [s]he is probably going > > to have to do this anyway, so why not save them the trouble? > > > > Given that rubygems support in Solaris is already present, we have three > > options to support Rails(and other gems). > > > > (1) Use Solaris packaging exclusively(ie., gems not allowed). > > (2) Get Solaris and Rubygems to co-exist. > > (3) Use Rubygems exclusively. ie., don't bundle Rails. > > > I'm a supporter of option 3), I feel that we'll just tie ourselves in > knots if we do 2) and 1) is just not going to fly with anyone who's used > Rails before. > But having said that, an idea would be to have a Solaris package that's > built around Gem management, where the package installer uses the Gem > command to check for an existing installation of the Gems that the > packages bundle, then displays what's installed currently and offers the > user the choice to do nothing or to install the Gems. In that case the > Solaris package would just be a wrapper package (i.e. Rails Support) and > not actually package any files. The package itself could setup a local > (and temporary) Gem repository. > > It sounds complicated and probably impossible given the packaging > restrictions we have. But it's no more complicated than option 2) would > be with it's countless scenarios. > > > >> I see in debian rake is delivered separately. Is it desirable to > >> require installation of rails for someone who only needs rake (if > >> that's a reasonably common use case)? > >> > >> > > > > We can easily package this separately if it's felt that non-Rails > > applications commonly use Rake too. > > > Rake download stats are hopelessly skewed by it's attachment to Rails. > It isn't rev'd as often as the other Rails dependencies and so isn't > downloaded as frequently, but it's difficult to determine how often it's > downloaded independently of Rails. Rake is a very useful tool, and my > instinct is to agree that we should package it separately.
I am in favor of gems for everything, with no OS level packaging at this point. The reasons I believe this are: 1) Ruby and Ruby on Rails are evolving too rapidly to keep up. (It will be a constant game of catch up.) 2) Gems have pretty much become the defacto way of managing extensions. So much so in fact that ruby-gems will be merged with ruby soon. (v1.9) 3) If we were to use OS packaging, we have the choice of using non-standard paths, or putting ourselves at risk for inconsistent package metadata. (If os packages are just bundling gems). Depending on how people go about installing gems and os packages. 4) Gems supports having a choice of installing various extension versions. (Or even multiple versions) This is an important feature, as interface stability is still not the highest priority among extension developers, so having the choice to run tested and potentially older versions is still very needed. OS packaging might have a difficulty with this, as typically the only choice is to install the latest package. Note: 1) Running "gem install Rake" isn't a big deal. I'd say if someone is going to be running ruby, known how to use rake, it is extremely unlikely they won't know how to install rake. Cheers, Brian > > Amanda > > > _______________________________________________ > > > webstack-discuss mailing list > webstack-discuss at opensolaris.org > http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/webstack-discuss > -- - Brian Gupta http://opensolaris.org/os/project/nycosug/ http://www.genunix.org/wiki/index.php/OpenSolaris_New_User_FAQ
