Gem suggestions

Ruby
1

There is a gem called icu4r that is built for Ruby 1.8.

I’ve taken that (some years ago) and ported it to Ruby 1.9 and I have it
on github for others to use.

I was going to create a gem for it and put it on RubyGems but I have
some questions as to how I should do it.

Should I continue to call it icu4r? (Am I allowed to even call it
icu4r?) Or should I call it perhaps icu4r_19? What is the common and
accepted practice in this situation?

Thank you,
Perry

2

Have you contacted the original author yet?

3

pat eyler wrote in post #980385:

Have you contacted the original author yet?

No, I have not. I did not know what to suggest or ask when I did.

4

I’d offer your 1.9 code up for integration. Ask if he’s interested in
working together, or if he’s not working on it anymore if he’d be
willing to pass the baton.

5

pat eyler wrote in post #980391:

I’d offer your 1.9 code up for integration. Ask if he’s interested in
working together, or if he’s not working on it anymore if he’d be
willing to pass the baton.

Ok. I sent him an email.

The hard thing is that it has a lot of C code that changed between Ruby
1.8 and Ruby 1.9. It was mostly superficial changes because the macros
changed. I’m wondering if it might be best to keep two versions: a 1.8
version and a 1.9 version. That is where my questions start. How often
is that done? I know the ruby debugger is split into a 1.8 version and
a 1.9 version for example.

Thanks,
Perry

6

Perry S. wrote in post #980393:

pat eyler wrote in post #980391:

I’d offer your 1.9 code up for integration. Ask if he’s interested in
working together, or if he’s not working on it anymore if he’d be
willing to pass the baton.

Ok. I sent him an email.

Update: the email to the address I have failed. I’ve used this email
back in 2008 so I guess he has moved on.

7

On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 8:38 PM, Perry S. [email protected] wrote:

The hard thing is that it has a lot of C code that changed between Ruby
1.8 and Ruby 1.9. It was mostly superficial changes because the macros
changed. I’m wondering if it might be best to keep two versions: a 1.8
version and a 1.9 version. That is where my questions start. How often
is that done? I know the ruby debugger is split into a 1.8 version and
a 1.9 version for example.

IMHO the best thing is to try keep it as one gem without splitting it.
You can use C macros (ifdef, ifndef, define itp) to do that. Also
think about FFI, maybe you can rewrite it from scratch? (I don’t know
how big is that gem)

If you can’t contact with original author I think you can use the same
name and push it to ruby rubygems (you can write about it in README
etc).

–
Pozdrawiam

Radosław Bułat
http://radarek.jogger.pl - mój blog

8

IMHO the best thing is to try keep it as one gem without splitting it.
You can use C macros (ifdef, ifndef, define itp) to do that. Also
think about FFI, maybe you can rewrite it from scratch? (I don’t know
how big is that gem)

Also combining that with the required_ruby_version:
http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/20#required_ruby_version

Compile it one way, push it up, compile another, push it up.