Gregory Seidman
3/1/2006 5:21:00 PM
On Thu, Mar 02, 2006 at 02:08:37AM +0900, Bill Atkins wrote:
}
} Here are some issues I've noticed with RubyGems' user interface:
}
} - Why do I have to confirm each _required_ dependency? What chance
} is there of leaving off a required dependency and still having a
} functioning install?
That is a bit weird.
} - Why does each confirmation happen individually? It would make
} sense to confirm or reject _all_ required dependencies and thus
} abort the install, but I can't see any reason for the current way
} of doing things. At the very least, why can't it find all the
} dependencies for the current package so that I can hit 'Y'
} repeatedly, instead of waiting a second or two for it to find the
} next dependency?
There's a flag you can give that will just automatically install all the
dependencies.
} - Why do i have to specify -r on the command line to build
} remotely? I understand that local gem installations are possible
} (and maybe even common), but wouldn't it make sense for gem to
} assume that "gem install rails" is a remote install and "gem
} install rails.gem" is a local install? In this case it wouldn't
} have to bother with this "attempting local installation"
} business.
If you don't specify the -r then it searches locally first, but it will
install from remote if it doesn't find it.
} - Why on earth, on earth, on earth is the package's documentation
} built locally? It is by far the lengthiest part of the install,
} and I can see no good reason why this couldn't be done at gem
} build-time. Am I missing something here? How could the
} documentation differ from one machine to the next such that this
} approach would make sense?
The documentation need not be part of the bandwidth required if it can be
generated locally. In general, bandwidth is more precious than CPU time.
Also, you don't have to have the docs generated at all, which saves time
and disk space.
} - When there are warnings in the documentation building, why do
} these appear last, making it seem that there were problems in
} installing the gem itself?
}
} - Why so little output while installing? Can't i at least pass a
} -v flag to get a better indication of what's actually happening?
} It would certainly make gem installs seem more responsive.
These are real issues.
} I don't use gems that often, but whenever I do, I remember these
} problems and get deeply frustrated. If gems is going to be included
} in the next Ruby release, it can't hurt to at least have some of these
} issues considered and either fixed or debunked.
Eh, that's nothing. I wound up writing a shell script over 100 lines long
to get it to install itself and all subsequent gems in /usr/local. I'd
really like that to be fixed.
} - a crotchety old RPA-user
--Greg