Hello Webstackers,

 Here are Ruby/Rails components for inclusion, and brief notes on what 
the component is(or why it is included).  The items that are included 
should make for a basic Ruby/Rails installation.  "Basic" being defined 
as the components required to build, and conveniently use a Ruby On 
Rails stack.

 The other pieces defined as basic, but not a part of the core Ruby 
build, include gems, the Ruby package management system, Mongrel, which 
is a Ruby based HTTP server that is a good fit for easy deployment of 
Rails applications, and RedCloth, which is needed to be able to 
successfully complete a Rails tutorial on the rails web site.  The FCGI 
connector for Ruby is included.  We'd need the adapter on the Apache 
side to be bundled with the AMP stack, as well, for this to be more useful.

 As far as native extensions are concerned, readline is, to use an 
oxymoron, a "core extension".  curses, ncurses, and openssl extensions 
can be obtained for free, since they are already available in Nevada.

 The doors extension, and the kstat extension, exist, but the former, in 
my opinion, is too new(a month old?).  And the latter appears immature 
on x86(also not a complete extension).  If anyone feels that they are 
still worth including, do let me know.

 Mechanize, and gdbm are on TBD list, since we don't know yet if these 
are popular enough.

The list:

Major components:
------------------------
-> Ruby 1.8.6 patchupdate 5000 (GPL)
 The Ruby Binary.

-> Rails 1.2.3 (MIT License)
  Rails and constituent libraries without which it cannot be called Rails.

Other Important Ruby Programs/Libraries(both concomitant and ones 
explicitly included into this stack):
-----------------------------------------------------
-> erb - part of Ruby distribution.
  Interpretor for Ruby embedded in, say HTML files.

-> irb - part of Ruby distribution.
  Interactive Ruby Shell

-> testrb - part of Ruby distribution
  Used to run tests/test suites.

-> rake - dependency for rails.
  Ruby build tool.
 
-> ri - part of Ruby distribution
  Ruby documentation viewer


-> rdoc - part of Ruby distribution
  Used to generate documentation from Ruby programs.

-> gem 0.9.0 - explicitly included.
  Ruby package manager.

-> Mongrel 1.0.1 - explicitly included
 (Ruby HTTP web server that affords easy development/deployment). (GPL)

-> Ruby-fcgi package 0.8.7
 (for web server support like Apache/Lighty etc.,) (GPL) [FastCGI 2.4.0 
is a dependency for this package]

-> RedCloth 3.0.4
  (Textile parsing library - need this for starter tutorial on 
rubyonrails.org to work). (BSD)

Extensions
-> readline 5.2 (basic console support for Ruby and Rails) (Native GNU 
readline, released under the GPL, is needed).
-> OpenSSL support - use version in Solaris. (get this for free by 
linking with /usr/sfw openssl).
-> Curses - use version in Nevada.
-> TK - use version in Nevada.
-> ncurses - use version in Nevada.

TBD, and the "Rather not include at this time" dependencies:
-> Mechanize (port of Perl's mechanize - a Ruby library to help script 
HTTP/S interactions)
-> Kstat extension(doesn't work well enough)
-> GDBM
-> doors(too new)

Regards,
 -ps

Reply via email to