Gems driving me to drink

jjore on 2009-07-24T00:09:13

I don't know my blood pressure but I'm considering getting a desk-side monitor just to empirically know when I'm being driven out of my mind.

I wish:

• that Ruby's RubyForge had something like CPAN's browseable directories like http://cpan.org/modules/by-module/Test for finding related things all grouped together
  
  
• that Ruby's gems were named categorically instead of "Bob's Unit Testing Framework"
  
  
• that there was a search.rubyforge.org which worked at least as nice as //search.cpan.org>
  
• that I could find where the test reports of gem's tests are aggregated like the CPAN Tester's http://matrix.cpantesters.org/?dist=Test-Simple+0.92>
  

Work day's done now. I feel ill.

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other reasons to hate gems

rjw1 on 2009-07-24T07:49:32

• tests not run by default when you install
• lots of gems now on github and dont make it to rubyforge
• people have personal gem repos which you have to use sometimes.
• up until gem1.3 installs would use a gig of ram.

there is one relatively nice feature. running a local repo is as easy as typing gem server

Re:other reasons to hate gems

djberg96 on 2009-07-24T22:59:15

tests not run by default when you install

Might not be a good idea: http://blog.urth.org/2009/05/the-real-problem-with-dependencies.html

They can be run explicitly, though. And, they can be run after they're installed. I don't know how to do that with cpan.

lots of gems now on github and dont make it to rubyforge

You can add github as a gem source so it will automatically look there.

people have personal gem repos which you have to use sometimes.

I repeat, you can add a source. And that's not an issue unique to Ruby. I don't see some of Dave Roth's stuff on CPAN for example.

up until gem1.3 installs would use a gig of ram

Good thing most people have upgraded then, eh? And it really depended on how many gems you had installed.

Also, I miss sane session handling on use.perl. Gah!

Re:other reasons to hate gems

rjw1 on 2009-07-25T07:49:56

i was ranting. :)
mostly i blame developers for wanting new shiny things.

Re:other reasons to hate gems

Aristotle on 2009-07-25T14:38:42

Might not be a good idea: The Real Problem With Dependencies

Might in fact be a better idea than so far thought.

What a gem...

educated_foo on 2009-07-24T13:30:56

It would have to be named "Robby's Runit Resting Ramework," since all Ruby modules have to follow the cutesy Scooby Doo naming convention. To me, the Big Suck of gems is the fact that it's not just a package installer -- it also has to be loaded every time you run a script using a package installed via gems, slowing down your script. Ruby copied some things from Perl, and improved others, but totally botched its version of CPAN, Perl's biggest asset.

Re:What a gem…

Aristotle on 2009-07-24T14:42:48

all Ruby modules have to follow the cutesy Scooby Doo naming convention

It’s a rock star culture.

Rubygems

rfunduk on 2009-07-24T17:43:29

Just wanted to add that you should add gems.github.com as a rubygem source, very handy!

Re:Rubygems

jjore on 2009-07-24T20:10:27

I'm mirroring rubyforge and github's gem stream now. I figure I can build something afterward to add categorical information so it's browseable.

Of course I'd *done* if I were using perl...