Chad Perrin wrote:
>
>>Chad Perrin wrote:
>>
>>>Generally, I think the best way to do it is to provide several different
>>>ways to install stuff, if you want cross-platform easy installs and your
>>>userbase will consist of more than just Ruby programmers.
>>>
>>>
>>I suppose that is best for brand-new users. However, it is a lot of
>>work, and it means there may be some confusion as to which version is
>>the latest, and how to keep up to date.
>>
>
>Not just new users -- non-technical users in general.
>
Non-technical users in general would benefit even more from a good
package management system. Much easier to run a 'gem update', even if
you have to use that scary, scary commandline, than it is to go find the
website, compare the versions, uninstall the old one, download the new
one, and install it all over again.
I agree that non-technical users would benefit from a good software
management system. Too bad most of them don't have such a thing by
default -- so to get their hands on one even for so limited a case as
installing Ruby gems, they first have to go through the effort of
installing the software management system and the language's interpreter
without the benefit of a software management system. Installing a Ruby
application that depends on the Ruby-specific software management system
is still an operation with too many steps.
>>Generally, even as a user, I find that I would much rather have a few
>>lines to paste into the terminal -- even better if I understand them --
>>than have to download something, find it, doubleclick on it, and maybe
>>still have to type a few lines in the terminal.
>>
>
>I agree -- but then, I'm a technically oriented user on an OS that
>basically just installs gems for me. I'm not a non-technical user on MS
>Windows.
>
On MS Windows, probably the best advice would be to find a one-click
application which installs Ruby and Rubygems, and then provide the same
instructions -- open a terminal and type 'gem install myapp'. Ideally,
you'd have a script (a batchfile?) which checks for the existence of
Rubygems, downloads it if needed, and then downloads your app...
. . . but it would be easier to just supply a one-click installer for the
application itself, such as is available for most C/C++ apps on MS
Windows.
I would suggest that the right approach is to fix usability problems
with Rubygems (or replace it with something better?), rather than having
each app have to solve these same problems all over again.
Oh, sure, I agree -- but until that happens, some of us will still need
to have a way to work around any such problems when we want to distribute
our applications. I'm not talking about a permanent solution so much as
a stopgap until the state of the art for easy cross-platform software
distribution advances to the point where the stopgap is no longer
necessary.
And let's not forget, everywhere but Windows, there are a few commands
that would work for that initial installation. Only on Windows do we
need anything elaborate.
Indeed. That's why I said, a couple emails further up the thread, that
for many cases the "right" way to handle it in the here-and-now is to
provide several different options for people to install applications
written in Ruby. One, of course, would be to use gems on (for instance)
FreeBSD. Another would be a one-click application installer for MS
Windows users who are unlikely to want or need to maintain an entire Ruby
ecosystem for multiple apps and a slew of libraries.
···
On Tue, Feb 17, 2009 at 08:35:58AM +0900, David Masover wrote:
>On Mon, Feb 16, 2009 at 05:59:39PM +0900, David Masover wrote:
--
Chad Perrin [ content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
Quoth Jeff Henager: "If the average user can put a CD in and boot the
system and follow the prompts, he can install and use Linux. If he
can't do that simple task, he doesn't need to be around technology."