Dear Rubists,
I am new to Ruby and I like it a lot. In short, i like it because
it has Python simplicity, Lisp consistency and Perl efficacy.
I have a concern I would like to share with you.
I had installed on my system a release of Ruby that in my opinion was too old: 2.1.
So I decided to install a recent release from source since
in my Debian 8.9 (old stable) it is not possible to install it from apt.
The problem is I want to use 'tk' and installing 'tk' has
been really painful. It took me at least 4-5 hours of fight.
For reference, if anybody will have this problem, I solved
installing Tcl and Tk 8.5.9 from source and then doing:
#> gem install tk -- --with-tcltkversion=8.5,8.5
[ I had Debian package installed for TclTk 8.5, it has given
me so many problems I tried to download the source, luckily ]
In my opinion that was really too hard. Tk is an important library,
it is very common to use a scripting language just to make a little
GUI in short time. At least in a system administration environment,
in which Ruby can shine. Or also in education, to teach kids programming,
a GUI is a must.
I belive packaging Ruby with Tk should be carefurefully
considered as an option. Batteries can be on the shelf,
but If to reach a part of the shelf I need to use 30 kg metal stairs then,
doh ... better if such batteries are included or many will not be
able to reach them.
Bye
Nicola
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