[Rails] Let's talk about packaging

[Chad Fowler]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 10:05:34 -0500, Scott Barron <scott at elitists.net> wrote:
> On Fri, Nov 05, 2004 at 02:35:23PM -0500, Chad Fowler wrote:
> > On Fri, 5 Nov 2004 09:24:43 -0500, Scott Barron <scott at elitists.net> wrote:
> > > Hello Railers,
> > >
> 
> 
> Hey Chad,
> 
> I was able to work a bit on it on Friday morning, and here are some of
> the issues I ran into (I'll try to spare any "drama" for those who can't
> handle truth).
> 
> #1.  It seems that if you try to install a local gem and it depends on a
> remote gem, it will then try to get the first gem remotely instead of
> using it locally.  This would mostly be a problem for someone who is
> maintaining some gems.  

Yea, this is a known bug that will be fixed in the next release.  Sorry. :)

> 
> #2. I guess the rest is all "post-install" issues.  It seemed that
> RubyGems was not maintaining the +x bit on the files (eg dispatch.cgi)
> that need to be executable.  I was able to run a rails app (as apache
> CGI) from the gem with a little tweaking.  Of course, if you bump the
> revision of the app you'd have to change your apache config, but I don't
> know if that's a terribly big deal.  So the main parts of post-install
> would be apache config, db config, setting a thing or to back to +x.
> 

I'm surprised about the +x bit.  Need to look into that one.

So, you're saying you pointed apache directly at the location of the
installed gem?  Interesting.  Not what I was expecting at all.  I was
envisioning some kind of install-then-deploy scenario.  Do you have a
sample app you were playing with that we could try?

> I think those were all the major issues I had.  It can be made to work
> as is, though it would be sexy if RubyGems had some sort of post-install
> script facility (I think RPM has this?).  It would definitely solve all
> the problems in #2, though I suppose an install script could be included
> as an executable in the rails app gem for now that might alleviate the
> problems.
> 

Yea.  There has been a lot of discussion and not very much work done
regarding post-install scripts.  I'm sure the day will come, but I
have yet to find the time to implement it (nor has anyone else). 
You're right, though.

> At any rate, I'd love for the world to have gem-installable rails apps.
> It's a sexy thought as I would like to both release an app or two to the
> world and ease my internal app management with gems.  I'm here to help
> in any way that I can (I'm htonl on irc, by the way).
> 

Ahh, now I know who you are!  You people and your weird irc nicks! ;)

Thanks,
Chad Fowler
http://chadfowler.com
http://rubycentral.org 
http://rubygarden.org 
http://rubygems.rubyforge.org (over 20,000 gems served!)