From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Return-Path: Received: from lists.gentoo.org (pigeon.gentoo.org [208.92.234.80]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by finch.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id E3A2C1396D0 for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2017 17:49:17 +0000 (UTC) Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 499A91FC063; Mon, 4 Sep 2017 17:49:13 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPS id ECFD2E08DB for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2017 17:49:12 +0000 (UTC) Received: from [192.168.1.100] (c-98-218-46-55.hsd1.md.comcast.net [98.218.46.55]) (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256 (128/128 bits)) (No client certificate requested) (Authenticated sender: mjo) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id C98473402FE for ; Mon, 4 Sep 2017 17:49:11 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] Ruby - 3 versions - seriously???? To: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org References: <7b8d7e5b-51d5-2bc2-e1be-e4c9e5510bda@wht.com.au> <9dfc7db0-cf95-e420-5f1d-c664ab547f2f@gmail.com> <20170902213730.GA13386@hades.fritz.box> <20170903103123.GB12087@hades.fritz.box> <20170904064923.GB4985@hades.fritz.box> From: Michael Orlitzky Message-ID: <9c252058-69fb-e504-1ca0-a7381f9ceaee@gentoo.org> Date: Mon, 4 Sep 2017 13:49:05 -0400 User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.2.0 Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Linux mail X-BeenThere: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org Reply-to: gentoo-user@lists.gentoo.org MIME-Version: 1.0 In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Language: en-US Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Archives-Salt: d16fc2c1-fde9-4326-8e30-c74103707ace X-Archives-Hash: f41f88bae93cb6b39b6ba7fb6dbc790a On 09/04/2017 01:07 PM, R0b0t1 wrote: > > For almost all languages but Ruby (and Perl) you can take code written > against one minor version and compile it in the next minor version. This isn't a language issue with Ruby, it's a culture/package-management one. For a long time, it's been easy to bundle dependencies in Ruby. The result is a culture of saying "I need the version of ruby-foo that was released on my birthday that one time mercury was in retrograde, and also I'd like the version number to have a seven in it somewhere because that's my daughter's age." When two package authors come up with two different requirements like that, you end up needing *two* versions of ruby-foo installed. Even if both packages could happily use the same, latest version of ruby-foo -- you get what upstream says in most cases. And what upstream says is usually crap, because they bundle everything and will never notice annoying incompatibilities like end-users do.