Parallel installable ruby stacks

[Chris Lalancette]

On 07/28/11 - 12:09:58PM, Sergio Rubio wrote:
> Hey all,
> 
> I've been working lately in ruby packages for 1.8, 1.9,REE and
> Rubinius that install in parallel and a ruby-base package that
> basically pulls upstream ruby package (standard fedora/RHEL ruby) and
> provides a script to switch between different ruby implementations
> when available.
> 
> I've also been researching the fedora project wiki but haven't found
> anything related to something like this in the roadmap.
> 
> So, what do you guys think about this? is this totally insane?
> 
> There's definitely the need out there to have different ruby
> implementations available (lots of ppl using RVM for this reason) or
> at least give the user the choice to install any of them without
> scarifying the benefits that native packages provides.
> 
> I'd love to hear what do you guys think about this stuff and I'd love
> to contribute with some sort of proposal if you guys think we can
> waste some cycles investigating this path.

My personal view is that per Fedora release cycle, we should have a single
stack of ruby + rubygems that is "known good".  For example, on Fedora 16 we
are going to be shipping ruby 1.8.7, plus rubygems for rails 3.0.9, and all of
the dependencies for that.  Everything there should be tested together and
at verified to work together.

In addition, we also provide rvm for those who want to use alternatives
to the "known good" stack; that will allow them to mix and match gems that
come from the packaging, along with gems that they get from rubygems.org.

Finally, we should think about packaging ruby 1.9 as an alternative to ruby
1.8, possibly calling the package ruby19 and using alternatives to switch
between the two (like python and python3).

If we did all of that, would that fit your use case?  If not, I'm not sure
what you are proposing, could you explain further?

-- 
Chris Lalancette