On Sat, 2011-10-08 at 05:46 -0700, Kenneth Porter wrote:
--On Saturday, October 08, 2011 6:29 AM -0700 Craig White craigwhite@azapple.com wrote:
CentOS 6 is new so there's little experience with running ruby packages on it but there's really no problem with running 'gem install $SOME_PACKAGE' on any system. Realistically, the available rpm packages are never going to keep up with the gems so after you get the base ruby rpm packages installed (ruby/ruby-irb/ruby-ri/ruby-rdoc/ruby-gems) you should probably just quit there and use the built-in gem package provider to do everything else. Also, if you are talking about something like a Ruby on Rails solution, the more organized setups will use 'bundler' to get the application up to speed rather quickly.
That makes sense.
I played a little with gem2rpm but to really be useful there should be a yum repository of standard gems that tracks whatever ruby's normal upstream repositories hold (its CPAN equivalent).
---- gem development is too fast/furious for any type of distribution native packaging to reasonably keep up. I've never actually looked at any gem2rpm thing and the thought of doing so seems ridiculous to me.
I've been using ruby stuff since 2005 and I pretty much avoid the distribution packages. FWIW, I don't use the native RPM ruby packages on CentOS and likewise, don't use the native DPKG ruby packages on Ubuntu and use Enterprise Ruby either.
Eventually it becomes obvious that to do anything serious with ruby, the OS packages lag behind and become the problem. If you are doing lightweight things, then you can probably get by. Certainly for someone's first foray into ruby, CentOS 6 ruby packages are sufficient and once you have the base installation, the gem packaging provider can handle things quite well.
Craig