[arch-general] Ruby gem packages in Arch

[Paul Gideon Dann]

On Monday 13 Jan 2014 17:58:59 Maxime Gauduin wrote:
> I only use a few ruby packages. However, you said it yourself, ruby and
> pacman both have different uses, my point was: do not change the content of
> a dir managed by pacman, do so elsewhere. I'm not saying you shouldn't ever
> use both. In the end, we're free to do anything we want, I just think it is
> bad practice to mix things up like described above. In extreme cases, just
> have a look at Windows, where anybody can install anything anywhere, we all
> know what it ends up like :P

What worries me about this is that you're making a clear distinction between "users" and 
"developers".  I'm not convinced that is really consistent with the Arch Way, which I have 
always admired because it expects that the line between users and developers is blurry, 
and actively encourages users to experiment and cross over.  The idea of needing to 
"switch" to ruby's (purpose-built) method of handling gems when a user wants to achieve 
"developer" status seems wrong to me.

And for what?

sudo pacman -S ruby-json
sudo pacman -R ruby-json

instead of:

sudo gem install json
sudo gem uninstall json

It doesn't seem worth it to me.  The commands can easily be documented in the wiki, and 
then the bar is lowered that tiny bit more for hacking something together in Ruby.  Bear in 
mind that rubygems doesn't spread files all over the system, either.  They're kept neatly 
tucked out of the way in /usr/lib/ruby, except for a few wrappers that end up in /usr/bin so 
that they're in the PATH.

Paul