The "bug" in question is not unknown to them. Especially the distribution of Ruby and Rubygems is completely botched.

The most common answer in #rubyonrails is probably this: "you've installed ruby/rubygems via apt haven't you? uninstall it and reinstall it manually."

Actually, what he says is "Gems can't even run because the gems needs openssl and net/scp, but the Debian (not Ubuntu) package doesn't install it along with rubygems.", which means that there is likely a missing dependency: rubygems should require ruby-ssl.

Of course, the more general point stands that the current state of the Debian/rubygems integration is far from ideal. However, fixing it takes people thinking about the problem and working on it, not just moaning and calling for boycotts. What a pissy attitude: it's easy to say "this sucks!", but much harder to create something better, or fix the broken thing.

I would have been quite comprehending of a "I'm very frustrated by X, Y, and Z about Debian". I mean, it certainly has its flaws (I ended up moving to Ubuntu myself). Another thing is this entitled attitude of "let's hurt them!"

All I'm saying is that the non-functioning state of ruby/rubygems on debian and/or ubuntu is not news. This is not something that Zed just uncovered that was previously unknown. Everybody in the Ruby community knows this, and has known it, for many years.

Thus, Zed offering a polite "bug report" rather than bitch and moan about it probably wouldn't have been all that much more effective -- seeing as how it has remained in the current non-functioning state for many years.

> Thus, Zed offering a polite "bug report" rather than bitch and moan about it probably wouldn't have been all that much more effective -- seeing as how it has remained in the current non-functioning state for many years.

And trying to round up a lynch mob is more effective how?

Well, Zed seems to have created a bit of a stir, hasn't he?

Compared to the previous total lack of a discussion over the last several years, it seems Zed's approach has been quite efficient.

Hot air does not fix bugs. Hard work does.

The state of the ruby/rubygems distribution is clearly not viewed as a bug by its maintainers, which is why neither hard work nor a bug report will fix it. Let's give discussion and attention a go.

Did you read what Zed wrote? That's not discussion, that's threatening people. It won't work.

Also, if you read the Debian guy's opinion, it is clear that, behind the scenes, and away from all the kerfluffle, people are doing work to improve the situation.

Also, you people seem awfully sure of yourself. If you peruse the bug reports, you might find some interesting nuggets:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=588125

> - Do we want to disable gem update --system? I think that we should allow a way for the user to do it anyway.

But don't let me disabuse you of your preconceived notions.

The proposed solution (an environment variable) is crap. That any of the Debian maintainers think that it's a good idea is an indication of how badly broken the Debian process is, and I know that Lucas was trying to do a good thing there. I don't blame him, it's at least an attempt at a fix.

There's already a working solution provided by Apple for Mac OS X and improved upon by the RubyGems team. There's concepts of vendor gems, system gems, user gems, and I think one other level. The Debian team has never considered it despite being told that it's there. The Debian team has also never offered patches that would help RubyGems come more in line with what Debian thinks it should be doing.

Why should the RubyGems guys bother working with uncooperative Debian maintainers?

I'm sure they've been working on it for the past half decade. Maybe now it'll even get resolved.