autolibs and ruby-build

[Tony Sung]

ruby-build (https://github.com/sstephenson/ruby-build/) doesn't require a package manager to work with. It compiles the dependencies it needs (openssl, libyaml, etc) on its own. Why must RVM requires a package manager (and together it comes those many issues working with MacPorts and Homebrew) when compiling rubies?

[mpapis]

Let's assume the simplest scenario - you install ruby, you install it with openssl to get https connections working, now your system provides openssl and it's headers and the root certificates to validate the pages you install are up to date. And it's all true on any *unix like system including all modern Linux distributions, the only exception is "OS X", it's the only unix like operating system that does not come with a package manager. To fill the gap multiple developers decided to implement package managers by them selfs, it's far from ideal as this means multiple solutions exist to solve the same problem and none of them solves the problem.

Now back to the dependencies, ruby depends on a lot more than just openssl or yaml - and those two are the only two things that ruby-build complies for you, the problem is that ruby silently ignores missing dependencies and you can easily end up with crippled ruby ant not know about it until you hit the missing parts. This is the place where autolibs comes into play, it defines rules for different rubies and systems allowing to automate the requirements installation.

Finally RVM 2 will be alos providing means to build the packages for your system so you can drop RVM from the equasion which should be useful for installing ruby on servers  while keeping all the requirements for ruby available.

You can support RVM 2.0 here https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/489-rvm-2-0

[Tony Sung]

the problem is that ruby silently ignores missing dependencies and you can easily end up with crippled ruby ant not know about it until you hit the missing parts.

Are there any examples of this? Coz people has reported to be using rubies built from ruby-build w/o any problems.

Tony

[mpapis]

we can start with ruby-1.9.3 on osx requiring to be compiled with gnu gcc, when you compile with clang then it gets few bugs, you do not have to hit them but they are there