Hi there. This request goes mostly to library authors that
just love gems, which seem to be an increasingly number
of them lately especially in conjunction with rake and
Rakefiles.
I have noticed that quite a lot of library writers do make gem
only releases. Now first, let me say, I do not have a huge
problem with gem itself. I can see especially Windows users
benefitting from that. For me though it is a lesser problem
which gem seems to solve for several reasons, but before
I decide to go off-topic and explain lengthy, making this mail
longer, let me just state that I agree that "rubygem"
itself is important and good to have.
My point now is, though - please please please - consider
to also release non-gem versions IF you do release a
gem version of your library!
I am aware that a user can probably easily repackage a .gem
file on his/her own, or you could just tell a user that
you will only maintain the .gem and he should use it
too, for me though I would want to have the option to
NOT use gems if there are other options available.
It feels like a tiny bit of freedom in choice - and
yes, it is not a big issue anyway. But enough to
mention it.
The other, more profound reason is that I myself was
sometimes not able to repackage a .gem.
Blame my incompetence for this.
I'd personally simply prefer if I'd have a .tar.gz or .tar.bz2
(I repackage locally to .tar.bz2 anyway via a ruby script)
Sometimes an author seems to be unsure what to release too,
one example mkrf (i hope the author forgives me for using
his decent project as example):
http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=1748&release_id=11072
You can see the releases sometimes being .gem only, or
.gem + zip .... or .gem + .tgz
Better examples (for me, as a user) would be
http://rubyforge.org/frs/?group_id=12&release_id=11315
as the latest releases seem to be in .gem .tar.gz and .tar.bz2
I get to choose whether to use .gem or not.
Maybe I could persuade the one or other to consider.
路路路
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