Comment 41 for bug 145267

2008/8/4 Lucas Nussbaum <email address hidden>:

> No, it's a patch that makes rubygems work better on systems with
> update-alternatives, while you should aim at a global solution instead.

No I aim for the simplest solution that will solve the most pain in
the shortest possible time. Others can then generalise that if they
want. My time is paid for don't forget.

From an Ubuntu point of view a superior package is good, because it
gives people a reason why they should use Ubuntu and switch to the
package rather than continue to mess around with the source package as
they do now.

Certainly I'm not going to get my 200 odd customers to move away from
source installation without a nice fat carrot to offer them.

> I won't be the one making the final decision on this, but for this patch
> to be added to the package, I would either want:
> (a) that the patch is very, very small
> (b) or that the patch is going to be integrated upstream in the near future

Technically this isn't a patch. It is using the upstream designed
interface to allow an operating system to add aspects to operations.
That makes it much more stable over time.

I'm asking upstream for their view on the binary clash problem. It's
only going to get worse as more interpreters come on line. But it
ain't going to happen quickly (certainly not by Augst 28) and in the
meantime you have unhappy users of Debian/Ubuntu who would be made
happy by what we have here - today.

> What do you mean with "default rubygems package"?

One like the package 'ruby' that installs the current 'system default' version.

All I have is a rubygems package that depends upon rubygems1.8 and
ruby so that I get the commands 'gem' and 'ruby' with the default 1.8
versions of each.

The user gem mechanism is broken by the Debian packaging and that
stops Rails 2.1 using it as it expects.

--
Neil Wilson