Arch Linux

oliparcol

Member

From: Paris

Registered: 2010-02-26

Posts: 39

Issue with ruby gem package dependencies (practical case: ruby-jekyll)

Hello,

I am the "maintainer" of the ruby-jekyll package (http://rubygems.org/gems/jekyll) on the AUR (https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ruby-jekyll/).

This package depends on a lot of other ruby packages which are also available on the AUR. Sadly, ruby-jekyll requires some specific version of its dependencies. For example, the safe_yaml gem must be in 0.7.0 version whereas the latest available version is 0.9.5.

I am also the maintainer of some of these dependencies (this is the case of the ruby-safe_yaml package) and I try to keep these packages up-to-date. But keeping these packages up-to-date prevent the users of the ruby-jekyll package to install it directly using only AUR packages, without modifying or creating the PKGBUILD files of the dependencies.

So my question is: what is the solution of this problem. I have already identified four different choices:

1. Continue to keep all AUR packages up-to-date with users being obliged to modify PKGBUILD files to set correct version for the dependencies.

2. Do not update dependencies and keep the correct version for the latest ruby-jekyll gem package.

3. Use bundle to create the package as suggested by someone in the comments (I am not sure that it is possible).

4. Stop maintaining ruby gem packages and suggest to users to move to a classic gem install (with bundler if necessary).

I've look through the official repositories for gem (and python) packages and I am under the impression that official archlinux packages maintainers do not create gem (or pipy) packages if the packages don't include a compilation part (for bindings). So I think that maybe the choice #4 might not be the stupidest one...

I appreciate your help,

oliparcol