On Thu, Oct 28, 2010 at 8:33 AM, Robin Bowes <robin-lists(a)robinbowes.com> wrote:
Hi,
I'm not a heavy ruby user (I don't use it on my F13 workstation, I use
it on CentOS for puppet) but my view is that, as standard, Fedora should
ship a single ruby version - preferably a recent one. I would imagine
that most ruby end-users simply don't need multiple versions
However, it should be possible to install rvm if required, and the rvm
packaging should either work in parallel with the system ruby, or should
obsolete it and work seamlessly.
I'd say there is quite a different audience between ruby user (puppet,
redmine or something) vs a ruby developer.
Ruby developers like and use RVM, and today, normally use a mac.
Making Fedora/EPEL/RHEL a better platform for ruby long-term means
appealing to the development crowd. The user base for simple ruby
application is already there. Some of the things done to appeal to
developers are basically unholy and ungood in general. Sticking libs
in vendor is a bad but continues to happen on nearly every major ruby
project. (and don't get me started on bundler).
Yet, Somehow we need to appeal to ruby developers, at least as a
platform for production deployments. This would probably be done by
having things like ruby application servers, and deployment tools
available. There are also some cases where we might want to maintain
parallel gem installations when both branches are still being
maintained (rails 2 vs 3, rspec 1.3 vs 2.0, etc). This would appeal
to the ruby developer more.
If you look at the rails rumble from 2 weeks ago, less than 2% of
systems used were Fedora/CentOS. That's quite sad. Most used Ubuntu,
and I am guessing just installed ruby gems and built the rest from
source, as Ubuntu's ruby stack IMHO, is in worse shape than that of
Fedora.
The other problem with using 'latest' is that ruby 1.9 really isn't in
use for many big application yet. I mean, it will be, but I don't
know if Amarok works with it yet. I know puppet/facter still have
bugs open for 1.9 compatibility. Going to 1.9 and obsoleting 1.8 is a
pretty big step.
As some take-aways:
* We should be working to get more and more gems into the Fedora
world, and this should include EPEL as that's where most production
applications get targeted for deployment.
* The ruby 1.9 parallel installation discussion should continue. RVM
might be answer.
* Somehow we need to get passenger into fold. Right now I think it's
a significant drawback that I can't use ruby with apache without
adding additional third-party repos that sometimes replace other ruby
portions of the stack.
* Market/advertise and discuss any big-time ruby applications
utilizing Centos/Fedora/RHEL as the backing platform.
stahnma