The Ruby Lockdown

Ruby
1

Is Ruby is getting further and further locked in to a specific set of
tools and libraries and if you don’t use those tools you are a second
class citizen?

Case in point:

https://github.com/erikh/rubygems-test/issues/issue/2/#comment_601820

While I realize Rake is the mainstream choice, I have been
successfully using an alternate system for years.

2

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Intransition [email protected]
wrote:

Is Ruby is getting further and further locked in to a specific set of
tools and libraries and if you don’t use those tools you are a second
class citizen?

I have no idea whether what you describe is a trend. My usage of Ruby
is too restricted to collide with any “preferred tools” and I am
largely gem agnostic albeit not ignorant. :slight_smile:

Case in point:

https://github.com/erikh/rubygems-test/issues/issue/2/#comment_601820

While I realize Rake is the mainstream choice, I have been
successfully using an alternate system for years.

On first sight it seems much more reasonable to leave the decision how
to test to the gem author which would mean dropping rake and
introducing a more generic approach as you suggested. Locking gems
into rake certainly increases dependencies and reduces modularity.
Also, this increases the learning curve to create gems which is
generally not good and also not in line with Ruby’s philosophy of
simplicity.

Kind regards

robert

3

On Dec 10, 2010, at 04:53, Intransition wrote:

Is Ruby is getting further and further locked in to a specific set of
tools and libraries and if you don’t use those tools you are a second
class citizen?

Case in point:

https://github.com/erikh/rubygems-test/issues/issue/2/#comment_601820

While I realize Rake is the mainstream choice, I have been
successfully using an alternate system for years.

I have an archive of every latest gem install that is a few months old,
let’s see how many gems contain a Rakefile:

$ find . -depth 1 -name “tgz" | wc -l
17066
$ for gem in find . -depth 1 -name "*tgz"; do tar tzqf $gem
"/Rakefile” 2>/dev/null; done | wc -l
12027

70% of gems are released with a Rakefile. If the remaining 30% of gems
that don’t have a Rakefile all run tests the exact same way I would be
shocked and surprised.

Currently nobody uses gem install -t nor gem test, so it is being
removed from RubyGems so that a dedicated maintainer can quickly improve
it. I’ve spoken to Erik on possible future developments of
rubygems-test as eventually it may be integrated back into RubyGems.

In the future Erik plans to switch to a plugin system which will allow
test frameworks to plug in to rubygems-test much like they plug in to
autotest.

The purpose of this first-edition is to grow the userbase without
locking himself into supporting code he wishes to replace in the future.

I think it’s reasonable for Erik to consider projects that don’t use
Rake, which ships with Ruby, as second-class and unsupported at this
time.

4

On Dec 10, 8:13am, Robert K. [email protected] wrote:

On Fri, Dec 10, 2010 at 1:53 PM, Intransition [email protected] wrote:

Is Ruby is getting further and further locked in to a specific set of
tools and libraries and if you don’t use those tools you are a second
class citizen?

I have no idea whether what you describe is a trend. My usage of Ruby
is too restricted to collide with any “preferred tools” and I am
largely gem agnostic albeit not ignorant. :slight_smile:

Perhaps characterizing it as a trend is a bit much. But it’s certainly
a slippery slope. I’m with the crowd that thinks Ruby should be going
the other way. It needs to be shedding some of its tertiary libs, not
adding more. The danger is clear, especially with added tools, as Eric
put it your project is now “second-class” if you don’t use Rake. The
line dissolves and then Rake is Ruby.

5

On Dec 11, 3:18pm, Eric H. [email protected] wrote:

I think it’s reasonable for Erik to consider projects that don’t use Rake, which
ships with Ruby, as second-class and unsupported at this time.

You hit the nail on the head. Now that Rake is in Ruby it’s easy for
people to justify requiring it’s use.

It’s bad enough that just having a library distributed with Ruby can
discourage innovation.

What do you think the developers of Rant thought of Rake being added
to Ruby?

What would you think if Bones were added to Ruby?

And then to use a RubyGems feature you had to use Bones?

I understand that rubygems-test is currently a plugin and not the end-
all be-all of gem testing. I’m just making a point that ultimately
it’s better to keep things open, and that I hope you make it an
important objective for future versions, and not just let it slip to
the way side, considering projects that use alternative systems as
“second-class”.

6

On Dec 13, 2010, at 01:26 , Shadowfirebird wrote:

you’re doing it again. :stuck_out_tongue:

7

Thomas S. wrote in post #967634:

Is Ruby is getting further and further locked in to a specific set of
tools and libraries and if you don’t use those tools you are a second
class citizen?

Case in point:

https://github.com/erikh/rubygems-test/issues/issue/2/#comment_601820

While I realize Rake is the mainstream choice, I have been
successfully using an alternate system for years.

And to think, I made such a large effort to stave off this crap at the
head before it got out of control. Checking back on this list to see if
anyone had any RDBI questions, it appears I failed. Here are some
talking points if you insist on beating this subject to death.

  1. rubygems-test is implemented as a plugin, and is not a part of
    rubygems proper in any way other than some patches I wrote (and a couple
    I have yet to write) which have yet to be integrated, and should
    complement any competing implementation nicely. Write one if you don’t
    like it. Hell, I’ll even work with you, although the codebase is not
    particularly large. The service is orthogonal to the plugin, that is,
    completely decoupled, and requires no direct integration if you so
    desire, so you can write any overcomplicated solution of your choice to
    post to it. I believe (from memory) it is here:

I have been working on it with a fellow philly.rb (Josiah Kiehl, who is
concentrated awesome with rails) member and I think we’ve reached a
happy point of success, and after some preparations have been made for
an initial test smoker, we will be launching the service. Expect more
info within a week or two and some POLITE coordination with the rubygems
team.

  1. Trans, you’d think after 6 years or so you’d learn to pick your
    battles. I just spent about 60 hours of hacking time last month
    implementing one of your suggestions for RDBI. I am not out to get you,
    but you’re certainly making it hard to want to consider anything you say
    with all the emotional overhead involved in responding to you.

-Erik