Ripping Open Ruby Packages

Posted June 14, 2009 * Comments(2)

This looks like a mistake: Rip: A Next Generation Ruby Packaging System. One of the things that Ruby does really well is library packaging, RubyGems may have some flaws but it basically works really well. Contrast this with the situation in Python where there are a number of different packaging systems (see, e.g. this discussion by Ian Bicking), and it’s just a mess — -this stands out all the more as Python normally follows a ‘one way to do it’ approach.

Hopefully this attempt to fork the Ruby packaging world will be dead on arrival.

Tip o’ the hat to Ryan Tomayko for pointing this out.

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2 Comments so far

  1. Ben Garney on June 17th, 2009

    Package management systems are a nightmare, especially if you’re not a primary language provider. Especially in a language with good namespace/package support… Just gimme the source zip and let me get going!

    I realize PBE ships with its own “package manager” - something I’m coming to regret. ;)

  2. Ian Phillips on June 17th, 2009

    Yeah, there’s something to be said for just having all the source in one giant tree! I gather that’s what quite a few Flash developers do, at least going by the blogs that I’ve read.

    Have you thought about using Maven or something similar? I’m not really a huge fan of it, but it does strike me that your current pbeproj files could be replaced with Maven poms, I’m not sure how well it works with AS & Flex projects generally though; and, obviously, I don’t know what tooling you have planned that builds on top of your project and solution files.

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