On the maintainability of Ruby [LWN.net]

On the maintainability of Ruby

Posted Jan 24, 2011 17:48 UTC (Mon) by docwhat (subscriber, #40373)
In reply to: On the maintainability of Ruby by bronson
Parent article: On the maintainability of Ruby

It's true that python is in a similar boat. This is part of the reason I custom-install python a lot on my boxes. It lets me ignore problems with the packaging of needed eggs, etc.

That being said, it's a real pain to maintain. And adding Ruby, with it's brain dead way of determining where things should go, just adds to the pain. (And yes, I know how to change all that, but it's a major pain in the neck. Things like that should be configurable on a system level, not with stupid ENV variables, without manually changing rbconfig.rb).

I totally agree with the criticisms raised in the article. We ship ruby in a commercial product and it's a total pain in the a**.

Ciao!

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On the maintainability of Ruby

Posted Jan 24, 2011 20:29 UTC (Mon) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

For the record, I agree with the criticisms in the article too. I just wouldn't use them to select Trac over Redmine. It's like selecting Ford over Chevy because

And, like you, I tend to install Python, Ruby (and especially rubygems), and Eclipse from source. They just seem to just work better. True, that's a sign of breakage, but I guess it never bothered me much.

On the maintainability of Ruby

Posted Jan 25, 2011 1:53 UTC (Tue) by docwhat (subscriber, #40373) [Link]

Well, it bothered me...if only because I used to package software, etc. for TurboLinux US and have helped with lots of Debian packages. I kept looking at it but I never could figure out how to make it better.

Perl is now, mostly, under control for me because Bugzilla (for example) installs the CPAN libraries into it's installation...which is great. Ruby is starting to be better for a similar reason: Bundler.

BTW: The article forgot to mention that unlike other interpreted languages (perl, python) you can install multiple versions of the gems and request specific ones when you 'require' them. Which means that having the Distribution manage the gems is a lot less important -- You can lock them in from the application (manually, or with something like bundler).

Oh, and one more thing. RVM can be installed system-wide: http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/deployment/system-wide/

Maybe that should be packaged instead?

Ciao!