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Rbenv and all other such tools are narrow, weak solutions for a general problem: Using multiple versions of a piece of software on the same machine without coll
by davexunit 11y ago
Rbenv and all other such tools are narrow, weak solutions for a general problem: Using multiple versions of a piece of software on the same machine without collision. Projects like Nix and GNU Guix solve this generally without needing a new special package manager for each thing you want more than 1 version of.
- Jgrubb 11y agoI've found rbenv to be a great, narrow solution for a specific problem. And maybe those other tools you mention are great but I've never heard of them, so they could use some marketing besides this comment. That's why tools like rbenv and rvm and whatever else get more broadly picked up.
- briandear 11y agoHow is Rbenv weak? It does exactly what is needed.
- regularfry 11y agoBecause it only tackles a single language.
- regularfry 11y agoWhat would be really handy at this point is a shim around Nix to make it trivial to manage ruby versions without having to learn a whole new ecosystem. I don't want to learn Nix, I want to use Ruby. Actually, that would have been really handy about 5 years ago, but the point stands: the problem with general tools like Nix is that you need a popular, specific application of them to get them across the chasm. Not only would a wrapper script using Nix to manage ruby versions be actually useful, it ought to be relatively easy to repurpose to node, elixir, elm, GHC, whatever. Make it so that I don't need to care that I'm using Nix in the background, and I'm actually more likely to use it.