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I'm seeing a trend in the comments re RVM and other suggestions. There are essentially two issues at hand here and we would all do well to remember the differe

I'm seeing a trend in the comments re RVM and other suggestions. There are essentially two issues at hand here and we would all do well to remember the difference between the two. 1. Ruby as a good citizen in a distro 2. Ruby as a development tool for programmers #2 is mainly achieved via RVM for sure. I program both Ruby and Python and as well as some JS and Erlang. I LOVE RVM for ruby/gem management and actually prefer it to Python's virtualenv (just a preference! Don't bite my head off ;) ) #1, however, is what we should really be talking about as it is what the original debian maintainer was complaining about. Matz is more talking about #2. I use Ubuntu as my development and deployment platform. I could never imagine if Python was not available, stable and usable as a base package on Ubuntu without me having to do some RVM/Virtualenv incantation each time. Sure, there could be a chef/puppet/script installation approach, but why? And for those who think this is trivial, think about all the packages that are in fact written in Python that are part of the desktop or base system. Python is literally embedded in everything! One of the greatest things about Debian/Ubuntu, and why I think it is the premier development platform, are things like: sudo aptitude install build-essential All that being said, this is a very hard problem to generally solve. I would hope that Ruby would be more Pythonic in the distro, but I don't see it being a priority for Ruby folks anytime soon.... Side note: go look up the transition from Python2.6 to Python2.7 for upcoming Ubuntu 11.04 to see what is involved in such a transition. It is non-trivial to say the least but Debian/Ubuntu maintainers are doing a stellar job with it...it is a complex issue and much care is needed... And as another aside...anyone remember the Ubuntu rolling releases issue? At is core with rolling releases was things like Python2.6 -> Python2.7 transition...not something you can easily achieve in true distro rolling releases and again, just an example of why this is a complex problem and things like RVM are not appropriate for discussion of #2 as it stands.

telemachos 16y ago
I agree with much of what you say about the two different threads and perspectives here (and elsewhere) whenever this argument comes up. However: > And for those who think this is trivial, think about all the packages that are in fact written in Python that are part of the desktop or base system. Python is literally embedded in everything! [...then later...] All that being said, this is a very hard problem to generally solve. I would hope that Ruby would be more Pythonic in the distro, but I don't see it being a priority for Ruby folks anytime soon.... You say that Ruby should be more Pythonic and that this is not a priority for "Ruby folks", but I'm not sure that's a fair way to characterize the distro problem. In fact, from Ruby's point of view, Debian has a special pride of place: it's the only officially supported Linux distro (since testing is done on Debian machines, I believe). For more on that see the discussion and links in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614618 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614618 (tenderlove is Aaron Patterson, a Ruby core dev). I would argue, as I say elsewhere in this thread, that the reason Python is so well handled is precisely what you mention in the first bit I quote. Because so much of the Gnome desktop is written in Python, perhaps Python gets special treatment by the distro. That suggests that the distro needs to meet the language devs at least part way, rather than that the language folks are the only ones who need to change their attitude.

telemachos 16y ago

I agree with much of what you say about the two different threads and perspectives here (and elsewhere) whenever this argument comes up. However: > And for those who think this is trivial, think about all the packages that are in fact written in Python that are part of the desktop or base system. Python is literally embedded in everything! [...then later...] All that being said, this is a very hard problem to generally solve. I would hope that Ruby would be more Pythonic in the distro, but I don't see it being a priority for Ruby folks anytime soon.... You say that Ruby should be more Pythonic and that this is not a priority for "Ruby folks", but I'm not sure that's a fair way to characterize the distro problem. In fact, from Ruby's point of view, Debian has a special pride of place: it's the only officially supported Linux distro (since testing is done on Debian machines, I believe). For more on that see the discussion and links in this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614618 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1614618 (tenderlove is Aaron Patterson, a Ruby core dev). I would argue, as I say elsewhere in this thread, that the reason Python is so well handled is precisely what you mention in the first bit I quote. Because so much of the Gnome desktop is written in Python, perhaps Python gets special treatment by the distro. That suggests that the distro needs to meet the language devs at least part way, rather than that the language folks are the only ones who need to change their attitude.