[ANN] Tattle - The Ruby Census

[Chad Fowler]

Greetings and Happy New Year, Rubyists!

At the first Rails Edge conference (http://therailsedge.com), Jim
Weirich, Bruce Williams, and I were chatting about how to improve the
RubyGems platform-specific behavior, when we realized that it would be
really helpful to have more info about the install footprint of the
Ruby community at large.

So instead of going right into hacking RubyGems as was our plan, we
created a little census tool and an accompanying web site to help us
collect information. Most of the info we collect is from
Config::CONFIG, with the addition of the RubyGems version.

We know this information will help the implementers of RubyGems, and
we hope it will also help Ruby implementers and library developers as
well.

To install:

$ sudo gem install tattle

To submit your info:

$ tattle

If you want to see what would be posted before posting, you can do:

$ tattle report

The information gets posted to http://tattle.rubygarden.org. You can
view the posted data with your web browser at that URL.

Thanks!
Chad Fowler
http://www.chadfowler.com

 

[Eric Hodel]

Greetings and Happy New Year, Rubyists!

At the first Rails Edge conference (http://therailsedge.com), Jim
Weirich, Bruce Williams, and I were chatting about how to improve the
RubyGems platform-specific behavior, when we realized that it would be
really helpful to have more info about the install footprint of the
Ruby community at large.

Note that this will help us complete the most-requested RubyGems
feature, the install --platform option.

 

[Kashia Buch]

Hi,

collect information. Most of the info we collect is from
Config::CONFIG, with the addition of the RubyGems version.

I find this a worthy cause, and shared my configuration options...
just to find out that I totally provided wrong information
about my system!

Reason: Tattle uses Config::CONFIG, which is where the ruby was
compiled in, not what it is running on.

$ uname -a
Darwin 8.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 8.8.0: Fri Sep 8 17:18:57 PDT 2006;
root:xnu-792.12.6.obj~1/RELEASE_PPC Power Macintosh powerpc

But tattle reported `arch, powerpc-darwin8.4.0`, just so. I
compiled ruby before on that system, upgraded, and now spread
false information.

Can happen, won't happen to many, just wanted to say so, how
clever your approach is, you might want to revise it a little?

Anyway, very nice idea, happy to be of service providing info,
have a nice day.

Kashia

 

[Eric Hodel]

Hi,


I find this a worthy cause, and shared my configuration options...
just to find out that I totally provided wrong information
about my system!

Reason: Tattle uses Config::CONFIG, which is where the ruby was
compiled in, not what it is running on.

Its still darwin 8, so gems for your version of ruby should work ok
with gems compiled for any other darwin 8 version. If you built for
darwin 8 but your uname -a now reported AIX that would be cause for
alarm.

 

[Rob Muhlestein]

Greetings and Happy New Year, Rubyists!

At the first Rails Edge conference (http://therailsedge.com), Jim
Weirich, Bruce Williams, and I were chatting about how to improve the
RubyGems platform-specific behavior, when we realized that it would be
really helpful to have more info about the install footprint of the
Ruby community at large.

So instead of going right into hacking RubyGems as was our plan, we
created a little census tool and an accompanying web site to help us
collect information. Most of the info we collect is from
Config::CONFIG, with the addition of the RubyGems version.

We know this information will help the implementers of RubyGems, and
we hope it will also help Ruby implementers and library developers as
well.

To install:

$ sudo gem install tattle

To submit your info:

$ tattle

If you want to see what would be posted before posting, you can do:

$ tattle report

The information gets posted to http://tattle.rubygarden.org. You can
view the posted data with your web browser at that URL.

This is a great idea.

Are there plans to allow submission of a semi-anonymous collection of
internal census data from potentially thousands of internally managed
clients? Perhaps some way to submit to you directly a data file
containing a summation of the data submitted individually to tattle.

That --platform option sounds very interesting as does the whole
discussion of footprint.

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

This is a great idea.

Are there plans to allow submission of a semi-anonymous collection of
internal census data from potentially thousands of internally managed
clients? Perhaps some way to submit to you directly a data file
containing a summation of the data submitted individually to tattle.

That --platform option sounds very interesting as does the whole
discussion of footprint.

Yes, it's a great idea ... but ... you are going to get *very* biased
statistics, because many Ruby users will be prohibited, either
electronically or by organizational policy, from uploading such information.

 

[Bil Kleb]

Yes, it's a great idea ... but ... you are going to get *very* biased
statistics, because many Ruby users will be prohibited, either
electronically or by organizational policy, from uploading such
information.

Our place is medium-paranoid, and after doing a "tattle report",
I was comfortable doing a "tattle". So far, our IT Security folks
haven't rained down upon me like the CDA in Monsters Inc.

Regards,

 

[M. Edward (Ed) Borasky]

Our place is medium-paranoid, and after doing a "tattle report",
I was comfortable doing a "tattle". So far, our IT Security folks
haven't rained down upon me like the CDA in Monsters Inc.

Regards,

Yeah ... I would have no problem with what tattle sent to the web site
on any of my three machines either. But it's better to check than run
the risk of getting written up in a corporate setting. Most folks work
in places that "tolerate" Internet use among employees but if you read
the corporate policy, you'll find that there are a lot of things you
can't do. Sending even that minuscule amount of system configuration
info somewhere is most likely a no-no in a lot of companies.

 

[Pit Capitain]

To install:

$ sudo gem install tattle

Chad, why does tattle depend on the hoe and rubyforge gems?

Regards,
Pit

 

[James Edward Gray II]

So far, our IT Security folks
haven't rained down upon me like the CDA in Monsters Inc.

<cracks up> I love that movie.

James Edward Gray II

 

[stu]

To submit your info:

$ tattle

sweet but it/ruby does not resolve through my proxy (even tho gems etc
does)...

Posting information to Tattle server. Thanks!
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `initialize': getaddrinfo: no
address associated with hostname. (SocketError)
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:553:in `do_start'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:542:in `start'
from
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/tattle-1.0.1/lib/tattle.rb:29:in `post'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/tattle-1.0.1/bin/tattle:14
from c:/ruby/bin/tattle:18


Well, I gave a gracious effort and died in the trenches...

-stu

 

[Mat Schaffer]

The information gets posted to http://tattle.rubygarden.org. You can
view the posted data with your web browser at that URL.

Thanks!
Chad Fowler
http://www.chadfowler.com

On a totally non-security related note, why doesn't the rubyforge
home page forward to http://tattle.rubygarden.org/ ?

If I google for 'ruby tattle' I get the rubyforge project near the
top. But no ruby garden page on the first page of results.

-Mat

 

[Bil Kleb]

Chad, why does tattle depend on the hoe and rubyforge gems?

Or alternatively, why isn't hoe and rubyforge /in/ rubygems?

Later,

 

[Ryan Davis]

Chad, why does tattle depend on the hoe and rubyforge gems?

Uh... because hoe is the single most awesome thing for ruby project
development in the last 6 years? It is used in 5% of all rubygems.
Get over it.

 

[Ryan Davis]

Or alternatively, why isn't hoe and rubyforge /in/ rubygems?

Good question!

Chad?

 

[Ben Bleything]

Uh... because hoe is the single most awesome thing for ruby project
development in the last 6 years? It is used in 5% of all rubygems.
Get over it.

I think the question is "why is this neat tool useful only to the gem's
developer required to install the gem on end-user systems?"

So... why is that?

Ben

 

[Kashia Buch]

Hi,

Its still darwin 8, so gems for your version of ruby should work ok with
gems compiled for any other darwin 8 version. If you built for darwin 8
but your uname -a now reported AIX that would be cause for alarm.

of course it works, how would you live without ruby.

My point was merely that I was spreading false information, and others
might
too.

Jo

 

[Chad Fowler]

sweet but it/ruby does not resolve through my proxy (even tho gems etc
does)...

Posting information to Tattle server. Thanks!
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `initialize': getaddrinfo: no
address associated with hostname. (SocketError)
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:48:in `timeout'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/timeout.rb:76:in `timeout'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:560:in `connect'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:553:in `do_start'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/1.8/net/http.rb:542:in `start'
from
c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/tattle-1.0.1/lib/tattle.rb:29:in `post'
from c:/ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/tattle-1.0.1/bin/tattle:14
from c:/ruby/bin/tattle:18


Well, I gave a gracious effort and died in the trenches...

Proxy support is on the TODO list (in my head). You will be mourned.

Chad

 

[Chad Fowler]

Hi,


of course it works, how would you live without ruby.

My point was merely that I was spreading false information, and others
might
too.

You're right (both that the report was wrong and that it's probably an
edge case). I personally think we can live with it for now, but it
might be worth rethinking our approach at some point. Just for the
record, we didn't think using Config::CONFIG was particularly clever


Chad

 

[Chad Fowler]

Or alternatively, why isn't hoe and rubyforge /in/ rubygems?

I think that's a fair question.

I'm not answering it, but it's a good question.

Seriously, worth a chat on rubygems-developers, I think.

Chad