Anyone have a Debian equivs file for ruby?

[Thursday]

I installed ruby from source on Debian and would like to create an
equivs package.

Does anyone already have one done they'd like to share?

There are numerous ruby-related packages and I'm uncertain which ones
are provided by the source installation of ruby using the defaults.

 

[BG - Ben Armstrong]

I installed ruby from source on Debian and would like to create an
equivs package.

Does anyone already have one done they'd like to share?

There are numerous ruby-related packages and I'm uncertain which ones
are provided by the source installation of ruby using the defaults.

It is easy to find out. Visit:

http://packages.debian.org/<packagename> (in this case,
http://packages.debian.org/ruby1.8 ). Then click on the ".dsc" link and
note the "Binary:" link. This lists every package the source package
provides.

Alternately, visit:

http://bugs.debian.org/ruby1.8

Or:

http://packages.qa.debian.org/ruby1.8

Each of these provides a slightly different view of the same
information.

Ben

 

[BG - Ben Armstrong]

It is easy to find out. Visit:

http://packages.debian.org/<packagename> (in this case,
http://packages.debian.org/ruby1.8 ). Then click on the ".dsc" link and
note the "Binary:" link. This lists every package the source package
provides.

Oh. A word of caution, though. The debian/rules for ruby1.8 specifies
many switches to ./configure so if you're just making equivs provide
everything that the Debian package does, it's a bit of a lie. Unless
you're certain your build from source provides everything the Debian
package does, you could end up with broken dependencies. Review each
one and only include in your equivs package the dependencies you know
your build satisfies.

Your best bet if you just want an updated ruby Debian package is to try
to apply the Debian patches to a new ruby upstream source tree and then
build new debian packages from source. Heed well this warning in the
description of the equivs package:

"Please note that this is a crude hack and if thoughtlessly used,
it might possibly do damage to your packaging system."

Ben

 

[Thursday]

Much thanks for the feedback.

I think in this instance, another challenge is that the ruby source
build provides more than the ruby1.8 package. Just one example being
libzlib-ruby1.8.

With this being a somewhat labor-intensive process, I'm now wondering if
there is a way to automate it using ruby (the creation of equivs file(s)
by automatically parsing the packages.debian.org site).

It seems they recently packaged up ruby 1.8.2-2 to fix the autoload bug
which I thought was introduced AFTER the Christmas ruby 1.8.2 release.
If this is correct, then it seems they're using the stable snapshot and
I guess ruby 1.8.2-2 will make it into Debian 3.1.

Your warning was a good reminder of the dangers of equiv. So, if we
wanted to simply rebuild the various debian ruby packages with
optimization flags, what is the most reliable approach? apt-build or
downloading the tarballs+applying diffs+tweak+build?

I'm leaning toward your suggestion of applying their diffs unless
someone stats success using apt-build for ruby.

 

[Thursday]

Much thanks for the feedback.

I think in this instance, another challenge is that the ruby source
build provides more than the ruby1.8 package. Just one example being
libzlib-ruby1.8.

oops

ruby1.8 provides these (incliding libzlib-ruby1.8):

ri1.8, ruby1.8-dev, libsdbm-ruby1.8, libtcltk-ruby1.8, ruby1.8,
libruby1.8, libsyslog-ruby1.8, libdl-ruby1.8, libstrscan-ruby1.8,
irb1.8, libdbm-ruby1.8, libiconv-ruby1.8, libzlib-ruby1.8,
libtk-ruby1.8, libreadline-ruby1.8, libxmlrpc-ruby1.8, libyaml-ruby1.8,
libruby1.8-dbg, rdoc1.8, libwebrick-ruby1.8, libtest-unit-ruby1.8,
libpty-ruby1.8, libracc-runtime-ruby1.8, libgdbm-ruby1.8,
librexml-ruby1.8, libbigdecimal-ruby1.8, ruby1.8-examples,
ruby1.8-elisp, libsoap-ruby1.8, libdrb-ruby1.8, libcurses-ruby1.8,
liberb-ruby1.8, libopenssl-ruby1.8

 

[Csaba Henk]

oops

ruby1.8 provides these (incliding libzlib-ruby1.8):

ri1.8, ruby1.8-dev, libsdbm-ruby1.8, libtcltk-ruby1.8, ruby1.8,
libruby1.8, libsyslog-ruby1.8, libdl-ruby1.8, libstrscan-ruby1.8,
irb1.8, libdbm-ruby1.8, libiconv-ruby1.8, libzlib-ruby1.8,
libtk-ruby1.8, libreadline-ruby1.8, libxmlrpc-ruby1.8, libyaml-ruby1.8,
libruby1.8-dbg, rdoc1.8, libwebrick-ruby1.8, libtest-unit-ruby1.8,
libpty-ruby1.8, libracc-runtime-ruby1.8, libgdbm-ruby1.8,
librexml-ruby1.8, libbigdecimal-ruby1.8, ruby1.8-examples,
ruby1.8-elisp, libsoap-ruby1.8, libdrb-ruby1.8, libcurses-ruby1.8,
liberb-ruby1.8, libopenssl-ruby1.8

Uh... This is why I switched to Gentoo.
[no distro religious war inflammation indeeded]

Csab

 

[Austin Ziegler]

ruby1.8 provides these (incliding libzlib-ruby1.8):

ri1.8, ruby1.8-dev, libsdbm-ruby1.8, libtcltk-ruby1.8, ruby1.8,
libruby1.8, libsyslog-ruby1.8, libdl-ruby1.8, libstrscan-ruby1.8,
irb1.8, libdbm-ruby1.8, libiconv-ruby1.8, libzlib-ruby1.8,
libtk-ruby1.8, libreadline-ruby1.8, libxmlrpc-ruby1.8, libyaml-ruby1.8,
libruby1.8-dbg, rdoc1.8, libwebrick-ruby1.8, libtest-unit-ruby1.8,
libpty-ruby1.8, libracc-runtime-ruby1.8, libgdbm-ruby1.8,
librexml-ruby1.8, libbigdecimal-ruby1.8, ruby1.8-examples,
ruby1.8-elisp, libsoap-ruby1.8, libdrb-ruby1.8, libcurses-ruby1.8,
liberb-ruby1.8, libopenssl-ruby1.8

And just *what* excuse do the Debian maintainers give for this
inexcusable mess that they've made of Ruby? With perhaps the exception
of ruby1.8-examples, ruby1.8-elisp, and *maybe* ruby1.8-dev and
libruby1.8-dbg (I don't know what's in those), the rest off this stuff
is part of Ruby's core as defined by Matz. If 'ri' isn't installed
(not necessarily the data files, because ri represents program
capabilities, too), then any system without it doesn't actually have
Ruby.

-austin

 

[Thursday]

oops

ruby1.8 provides these (incliding libzlib-ruby1.8):

ri1.8, ruby1.8-dev, libsdbm-ruby1.8, libtcltk-ruby1.8, ruby1.8,
libruby1.8, libsyslog-ruby1.8, libdl-ruby1.8, libstrscan-ruby1.8,
irb1.8, libdbm-ruby1.8, libiconv-ruby1.8, libzlib-ruby1.8,
libtk-ruby1.8, libreadline-ruby1.8, libxmlrpc-ruby1.8, libyaml-ruby1.8,
libruby1.8-dbg, rdoc1.8, libwebrick-ruby1.8, libtest-unit-ruby1.8,
libpty-ruby1.8, libracc-runtime-ruby1.8, libgdbm-ruby1.8,
librexml-ruby1.8, libbigdecimal-ruby1.8, ruby1.8-examples,
ruby1.8-elisp, libsoap-ruby1.8, libdrb-ruby1.8, libcurses-ruby1.8,
liberb-ruby1.8, libopenssl-ruby1.8

Uh... This is why I switched to Gentoo.
[no distro religious war inflammation indeeded]

Csab

It turns out that I didn't need to bother with all the equivs crap. My
ignorance shouldn't penalize Debian.

I could simply do:

# apt-get source ruby1.8
# cd ruby1.8-1.8.2
# vim debian/rules #if we want to tweak the default configuration
# dpkg-buildpackage

I switched away from Gentoo after an emerge update broke my system. But
this was around Dec 2003 so Gentoo is probably a lot more stable by now.
I'll probably reinstall Gentoo in Dec 2005 on a desktop to see how
things have progressed when I have faster machines (it is painful even
with distcc).