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> Ruby and Clojure stuff are the only thing I download and install myself. And why do you do this? Because the Debian/Ubuntu packages for these things are old
by blasdel 16y ago
> Ruby and Clojure stuff are the only thing I download and install myself.
And why do you do this? Because the Debian/Ubuntu packages for these things are old and broken, primarily because they are insistent on breaking up the packages and scattering the files all over the FHS they worship. They despise RubyGems because it installs packages in a self-contained way and lets you install multiple versions of everything without mangling the names. It puts them out of a job.
- rbanffy 16y ago> They despise RubyGems because it installs packages in a self-contained way A way that conflicts with the software management Linux distros use. You can't issue a command and have your system updated and, at the same time, your Ruby environment updated. Introducing some new gem can crash system software written in Ruby and make it impossible for the system management tools to rely on the same interpreter you do. If you want to install your gems, something like Python's virtualenv is recommended. I don't know if Ruby has one. If I relied on Ruby, I would make sure it had, even if it meant writing C.
- regularfry 16y agoExcept it doesn't, because nobody (that I've ever heard of) backports security fixes to old gem versions.