This is an early stage version of a page we could introduce for every major group of ports which should follow certain common principles, and where the involved maintainers can collect the results of their dicussions. I suggest introducing a similar page for Python, Perl, Erlang, and similar cases as well, if it turns out to be useful.

Ruby Section

This page describes the general organization of the ruby section. It contains information about Ruby implementations and the library packages, and how they are generally used in MacPorts. Information is divided into a that relevant for users of these ports, and information for maintainers. It should address things like naming conventions, dealing with different versions of the language implementation and how it works together with the package manager gem and other installation methods.

Usage Information

Ports with ruby libraries have a prefix rb or rb19. So the Rails port is called rb-rails, e.g. If you installed a port which installs a rubygem, you should avoid manipulating that port with gem directly, since that makes the information inside MacPorts inconsistent. If you use gem a lot directly, you might be better off if you these exclusively.

Guidelines for Ruby Ports

• should have a name prefix of "rb" for 1.8, and "rb19" for 1.9. It would be nice to have ports compatible with both, but that is not possible, since the library paths for ruby get determined during configuration phase and are specific for the different versions.

Problems & Potential Improvements

• many ruby library ports are installed by invoking the Rubygems installer program gem. Since that is just a regular command line tool, a package installed as port can be uninstalled or upgraded using gem directly. That results in an unconsistent state of the registry, because a certain version of some software is marked as installed, while in fact it isn't or not in that version. This should be solved in some way, maybe by installing in a special location of that is possible.
• There are a number of ruby implementations available, but currently only Matz' Ruby 1.8.7 is invokable just as ruby, or Matz' Ruby 1.9.1 is installed with variant +nosuffix. The variant causes ruby 1.9 to install withuout the suffix, but that makes it conflict with port ruby, i.e. 1.8.7. On the list Brett Eisenberg has suggested fixing that using the same approach as python_select and gcc_select, i.e. by writing configuration symlinks in a PATH location.
• To be discussed: should be library ports for ruby generally be avoided in favor of the now ubiquitous gem (part of the 1.9 release)? As said, gems easily break the repositories consistency if packages are not managed exclusively over port or gem.