[Rubyinstaller-devel] Re: FXRuby and the (new) Ruby Installer for OS X

[Stephen Steiner]

> We don't want to be just another packaging system. Correct me if I'm 
> wrong,
> but a source-based installation is already provided by fink and 
> darwinports.
> Duplicating this probably wouldn't sway their hardcore users, and 
> wouldn't
> be simple enough to reach our target audience.

They offer kind of one-click-ish install but you have to use their 
tools.  They
do a pretty good job with dependencies, though and I may actually use
one or the other to get binaries to be packaged.

> A good example/model of this type of binary distribution on OS X might 
> be
> TclTk Aqua (http://tcltkaqua.sourceforge.net/).

Downloading...  Yes, it is one big package with 50 separate packages, 
one for
each of the included apps.  Very time consuming to build, no doubt.  I 
think I
have come up with a better way.  I'll let you know when I've proved it 
out.
Unfortunately I'm going to have to write some stuff (in Ruby, of 
course) to get
my approach to work since I can't find a tool that does what I want.

> 1) What are the roadblocks and/or problems with a binary OS X 
> installer?

1> Ruby's already installed on the system.
2> Things compiled on one version of OS X might have problems running on
      other versions. (this is true of any *nix)

> 2) Do these problems have reasonable solutions that we can live with?

1> 	Not a big deal since ruby is pretty self contained.  Only issue is 
making sure
	that the user's running the install they think they're running.

2> 	This is really the only potential hangup.  I'm running OS X 10.3.5 
and, if I were to
	configure/make on my system, there's a chance that the result wouldn't
	run on an earlier version.

	I can make images for a couple of OS X versions but things quickly 
escalate and,
	due to the the sheer number of possible permutations, quickly becomes
	unmanageable.

	Also, testing each installation/OS Version is time consuming.

	I'm probably being overly paranoid here but I really wouldn't like to 
give users a
	bad impression of Ruby by having an incompatibility between OS X 
versions
	look like a Ruby problem.

	I've noticed that many of the binary distributions 	have specific 
downloads for specific
	OS X versions (Tcl/Tk Aqua has separate versions for 10.1, 10.2, and 
10.3 to use
	your example).

I would like to clear up a misperception: OS X ships with the developer 
tools.  There is
no need to download the developer tools unless the version of OS X is 
so old (10.1 from
the beginning of 2001) that Ruby itself won't build properly with the 
included tools.

>    We should probably add RubyCocoa to the list of included extensions.

Ok!  RubyCocoa, BTW, will be darn close to useless without the 
developer tools.

I have come up with a pretty good way to do the installler package and 
I'm researching
fink and DarwinPorts to see if any of their tools might be helpful.

I'd love to find a good IDE that worked on OS X for Ruby development 
with a built-in
debugger...

I'm going to put together a preliminary doc on what will be installed, 
etc. later today,
mostly to clarify my own thinking on exactly where this project is 
going.

I'll be very interested to hear RIch's thoughts on this.

Steve