5 ms·

Does ruby not have the same level of both?

by ryeguy 14y ago

adrianhoward 14y ago
Short answer - no. CPAN has had many more years than Ruby's Gems to mature and develop. There are 2560 [edit: I was wrong. 39411 is the right number] gems on http://rubygems.org/ http://rubygems.org/. There are 24,920 distributions on CPAN. Well over 100k modules. The automated testing infrastructure, documentation, etc. also makes it much easier to figure out what modules work on what systems and what versions of perl than in ruby land. Things like meta.cpan.org and cpantesters.org are a god send that I wish I had when I'm using other languages. And the testing infrastructure rocks. It's evolved so everything produces and consumes TAP (http://testanything.org/ http://testanything.org/) a simple human-readable protocol for expressing pass/fail results (with standard modules that help people output and consume TAP). This means I can write tests procedurally, or in an xUnit style, or a BDD style, or a specification-based testing style, or use various DSLs for things like exception testing or for testing web apps... and so on. I just use the style that seems most appropriate for the thing being tested. They all output TAP. All the standard test runners consume TAP. Everything "just works" and plays nice together. I can even easily integrate tests running in other languages or environments as long as they output TAP. In addition - since almost all of the Perl testing modules use a common TAP output module - you can usually integrate different styles in the same test code. So, if appropriate, I can pop some specification-based tests and some friendly web-testing DSL as assertions inside my xUnit tests. Fun :-) Wish other languages test environments were setup this way.
- noste 14y ago
  According to rubygems.org stats page[1], there are 39411 gems available. I think the number 2560 on "all gems" page[2] is the number of gems starting with letter "a". 1. http://rubygems.org/stats http://rubygems.org/stats 2. http://rubygems.org/gems?letter=A http://rubygems.org/gems?letter=A
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    You're quite correct. My apologies. I misunderstood the 39411 number to be the total number of gems submitted over all time, rather than the total number of extant versions. My bad.
    - bgilroy26 14y ago
      Don't worry, it happens all the time [1]. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238544 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238544
      - vog 14y ago
        Ironically, this is the same issue of sloppy testing, just at another level (i.e. missing usability tests on the http://rubygems.org/gems http://rubygems.org/gems website for at least months, maybe years)
- jcmhn 14y ago
  The thing that is really awesome about the testing environment is that is makes it immediately obvious when a module on cpan has been abandoned. That makes it easy to use a cpan module with confidence, which imo is not valued highly enough in other language communities cpan-like structures.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  wrt testing, ruby is getting there with http://travis-ci.org http://travis-ci.org Also the rspec ecosystem is becoming more and more mix-and-match. It's nowhere near as integrated as perl yet though.
  - pjscott 14y ago
    Travis-CI also works for a bunch of other languages, so if you're a library maintainer, it's definitely worth checking out: http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/getting-started/ http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/getting-started/
    - zalew 14y ago
      It will be amazing when it supports any repo path. Now it's just a github utility.
zentrus 14y ago
Check this site out for a comparison of the various module counts per language. It is really incredible that rubygems surpassed CPAN last year and continues to grow at a very rapid rate. Quality may be another matter, but still, impressive. http://www.modulecounts.com/ http://www.modulecounts.com/
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  Nice site. Well found. I find it interesting that PHP doesn't have anything in the same league as Perl/Ruby/Python even after all these years. Any PHP folk out there?
  - milano 14y ago
    Composer (with http://packagist.org/ http://packagist.org/) is getting popular in the PHP world.
  - pwaring 14y ago
    The closest PHP has to CPAN is PEAR (http://pear.php.net http://pear.php.net). It stalled for a long time, although development seems to have picked up a bit now that everything is on GitHub (https://github.com/pear/ https://github.com/pear/)
- Aethaeryn 14y ago
  They're missing a few languages. For instance, Quicklisp.[1] [1] http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/ http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/
- jonathansizz 14y ago
  Except that there's over 107,000 Perl modules on CPAN, and fewer than 40,000 Ruby gems.
  - adrianhoward 14y ago
    That's not comparing like with like. Gems are the equivalent of CPAN distributions.

Does ruby not have the same level of both?

by ryeguy 14y ago

Does ruby not have the same level of both?

Short answer - no. CPAN has had many more years than Ruby's Gems to mature and develop. There are 2560 [edit: I was wrong. 39411 is the right number] gems on http://rubygems.org/ http://rubygems.org/. There are 24,920 distributions on CPAN. Well over 100k modules. The automated testing infrastructure, documentation, etc. also makes it much easier to figure out what modules work on what systems and what versions of perl than in ruby land. Things like meta.cpan.org and cpantesters.org are a god send that I wish I had when I'm using other languages. And the testing infrastructure rocks. It's evolved so everything produces and consumes TAP (http://testanything.org/ http://testanything.org/) a simple human-readable protocol for expressing pass/fail results (with standard modules that help people output and consume TAP). This means I can write tests procedurally, or in an xUnit style, or a BDD style, or a specification-based testing style, or use various DSLs for things like exception testing or for testing web apps... and so on. I just use the style that seems most appropriate for the thing being tested. They all output TAP. All the standard test runners consume TAP. Everything "just works" and plays nice together. I can even easily integrate tests running in other languages or environments as long as they output TAP. In addition - since almost all of the Perl testing modules use a common TAP output module - you can usually integrate different styles in the same test code. So, if appropriate, I can pop some specification-based tests and some friendly web-testing DSL as assertions inside my xUnit tests. Fun :-) Wish other languages test environments were setup this way.

noste 14y ago
According to rubygems.org stats page[1], there are 39411 gems available. I think the number 2560 on "all gems" page[2] is the number of gems starting with letter "a". 1. http://rubygems.org/stats http://rubygems.org/stats 2. http://rubygems.org/gems?letter=A http://rubygems.org/gems?letter=A
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  You're quite correct. My apologies. I misunderstood the 39411 number to be the total number of gems submitted over all time, rather than the total number of extant versions. My bad.
  - bgilroy26 14y ago
    Don't worry, it happens all the time [1]. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238544 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3238544
    - vog 14y ago
      Ironically, this is the same issue of sloppy testing, just at another level (i.e. missing usability tests on the http://rubygems.org/gems http://rubygems.org/gems website for at least months, maybe years)
jcmhn 14y ago
The thing that is really awesome about the testing environment is that is makes it immediately obvious when a module on cpan has been abandoned. That makes it easy to use a cpan module with confidence, which imo is not valued highly enough in other language communities cpan-like structures.
JonnieCache 14y ago
wrt testing, ruby is getting there with http://travis-ci.org http://travis-ci.org Also the rspec ecosystem is becoming more and more mix-and-match. It's nowhere near as integrated as perl yet though.
- pjscott 14y ago
  Travis-CI also works for a bunch of other languages, so if you're a library maintainer, it's definitely worth checking out: http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/getting-started/ http://about.travis-ci.org/docs/user/getting-started/
  - zalew 14y ago
    It will be amazing when it supports any repo path. Now it's just a github utility.

zentrus 14y ago

Check this site out for a comparison of the various module counts per language. It is really incredible that rubygems surpassed CPAN last year and continues to grow at a very rapid rate. Quality may be another matter, but still, impressive. http://www.modulecounts.com/ http://www.modulecounts.com/

adrianhoward 14y ago
Nice site. Well found. I find it interesting that PHP doesn't have anything in the same league as Perl/Ruby/Python even after all these years. Any PHP folk out there?
- milano 14y ago
  Composer (with http://packagist.org/ http://packagist.org/) is getting popular in the PHP world.
- pwaring 14y ago
  The closest PHP has to CPAN is PEAR (http://pear.php.net http://pear.php.net). It stalled for a long time, although development seems to have picked up a bit now that everything is on GitHub (https://github.com/pear/ https://github.com/pear/)
Aethaeryn 14y ago
They're missing a few languages. For instance, Quicklisp.[1] [1] http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/ http://www.quicklisp.org/beta/
jonathansizz 14y ago
Except that there's over 107,000 Perl modules on CPAN, and fewer than 40,000 Ruby gems.
- adrianhoward 14y ago
  That's not comparing like with like. Gems are the equivalent of CPAN distributions.