Can Ruby stay ahead ?

[Gregory Brown]

There's no doubt that CPAN is a great resource. These are a few of its
highlights:

2. A module namespace convention that helps one know what the module
does, rather than 'cute' names (Test::MockClass vs. Mocha,
PDF::ReportWriter vs. prawn, etc)

There is a reason Prawn has a cute name. It's not ready yet. As the
current maintainer of PDF::Writer (more like janitor), I did not want
to create confusion by putting Prawn into the PDF namespace until I
felt it was production ready. When Prawn reaches 1.0, it will at the
very least be aliased to PDF:ocument.

So without arguing your main point, Prawn is an example in which this
was intentional, not coincidental.

-greg

 

[Gregory Brown]

There's no doubt that CPAN is a great resource. These are a few of its
highlights:

2. A module namespace convention that helps one know what the module
does, rather than 'cute' names (Test::MockClass vs. Mocha,
PDF::ReportWriter vs. prawn, etc)

There is a reason Prawn has a cute name. It's not ready yet. As the
current maintainer of PDF::Writer (more like janitor), I did not want
to create confusion by putting Prawn into the PDF namespace until I
felt it was production ready. When Prawn reaches 1.0, it will at the
very least be aliased to PDF:ocument.

So without arguing your main point, Prawn is an example in which this
was intentional, not coincidental.

-greg

 

[Robert Klemme]

That's a good list of features, thanks for putting it together. Let's
see:

1. Tricky one since there's more than one big source of gems. Well,
there are two main ones - github and gems.rubyforge.org - plus a host
of others. We could build such a site for RubyForge... would be
interesting.

But note that there is RAA already! It seems to be mentioned fewer
times recently, which makes me wonder whether people still use it.

Kind regards

robert

 

[Suraj Kurapati]

But note that there is RAA already! It seems to be mentioned fewer
times recently, which makes me wonder whether people still use it.

I certainly use it and I make sure to announce my projects there in
addition to RubyForge and ruby-talk. Also, looking at the homepage[1],
you can see that project entries are being updated quite regularly ---
just like on RubyForge news.

[1]: http://raa.ruby-lang.org/

 

[David Masover]

There's no doubt that CPAN is a great resource. These are a few of its
highlights:
1. A single, cohesive website that categorizes all modules (http://
search.cpan.org/) for easy browsing.

True, this would be nice. The gems system should allow this -- after all,=20
there's a single, cohesive website for all local gems (gem server).

2. A module namespace convention that helps one know what the module
does, rather than 'cute' names (Test::MockClass vs. Mocha,
PDF::ReportWriter vs. prawn, etc)

I'm ambivalent about this. I like CPAN namespaces, but I also like the fact=
=20
that competing implementations are distinctively named -- for instance,=20
Hpricot vs Nokogiri. Once a library is known, of course, the namespaces are=
=20
usually coherent -- for instance, Nokogiri-related stuff is in the Nokogiri=
=20
namespace.

3. A search engine that returns not only description, but also last
update, and reviews. (e.g. http://search.cpan.org/search?query=3Dxml)

Not that it's a replacement (as it isn't integrated into Gems), but Github=
=20
does expose last update, and makes it quick to find forks, etc.

But yes, this would be useful.

4. Page for each distribution with links to the classes and files,
dependencies, test results, etc. (Example:
http://search.cpan.org/dist/XML-Twig-3.32/) Much better interface than
Rubyforge.

This seems to be provided by the rdoc, somewhat -- again, in gem server -- =
but=20
again, that's not as useful when looking at new modules.

5. Automated tests run by a cadre of volunteers. New releases of
modules are tested upon release on a variety of Perl versions and
operating systems. See the test reports and Perl/Platform Version
Matrix links on the distribution page.

Ideally, these would be run on release candidates, too, right?

6. Ratings. When there are many options for a particular task, seeing
the star ratings can help you whittle down the options to the best.
The overall highest rated modules tend to be the best-practice ones
you should be using.

This would be helpful. It's easy to see how it might be abused, but the=20
paradox of choice can be irritating.

7. The 'cpan' command comes with Perl.

The 'gem' command comes with Ruby 1.9.

9. CPAN has a very rich set of mirrors (http://mirrors.cpan.org/) and
you can configure your local cpan command to use a subset, say a
primary and a backup (good for environments requiring firewall rules
to be in place for external access).

I'm not sure Gems is to the point where this is necessary, in terms of shee=
r=20
popularity.

It seems that this could be simplified as:

1. search.cpan.org
2. better docs, on average
3. community (volunteer) services

1 and 3 should be easy to solve. 2 will take time.

Overall, neither is enough to make me ditch Ruby for Perl, and I doubt I'd =
end=20
up using a Perl library over an equivalent Ruby one. But that is compelling=
=2E=20
Thanks.