

RubyGems is not a Battlefield, Part I (5/25 meeting w. Eric+Ryan)  - sandal
http://blog.majesticseacreature.com/rubygems-is-not-a-battlefield-part-1-notes-fr

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technomancy
So refreshing to hear someone do something more than complain.

~~~
nirvdrum
Interesting. I read it as it being refreshing to hear someone actually listen.

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ericb
Are the Rubygems folks also looking at Rubygems effect on performance related
to require 'foo'? It sounds in this ticket like it may be a ruby problem, but
in other places I have seen, it seemed like the IO/file lookups didn't scale
well with lots of gems performance-wise.

<http://redmine.ruby-lang.org/issues/3924>

~~~
sandal
Unless this is something that has been known to be ignored or rejected
otherwise, or unless you feel you can't approach them, I'd just recommend
filing a support request or asking on the rubygems-developers mailing list or
#rubygems on Freenode.

My main focus is on conflict points right now.

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aaronbrethorst
\--no-ri --no-rdoc

~~~
sandal
This is exactly the sort of unhelpful comment that is making the situation
worse, not better. There has been a lot of discussion about why RubyGems
doesn't support this, and perhaps that discussion got lost in the circus of
+1's and tensions. Would you like me to try to get Ryan and Eric to write up
something explaining their stance so that you can understand it better?

If you already understand it, would you mind writing a reasoned, well thought
out explanation of why you think this is important and then submit a real pull
request or discuss this on the rubygems-developers mailing list?

If the answer to those two things is no, then you are not actually
contributing, you're stating a preference with no explanation, and no
sensitivity to the fact that your personal preference isn't necessarily what's
best for Rubygems.

The good news is, RubyGems does has a configuration file which you can set
once and solve this problem for yourself. Add this line to your ~/.gemrc:

    
    
        gem: --no-ri --no-rdoc
    

Hopefully this has come across as helpful and not rude. I'm trying the best I
can to get both sides of this situation to cool down a bit, and we can help
that happen as users and contributors by being a bit more mature about the way
we interact with this project.

~~~
glenngillen
Gregory,

I think their response is one of the things making the situation worse. If I
understand correctly the reasons for keeping it are:

* If documentation isn't generated automatically, where is the incentive to write documentation?

* It's useful for newbies because they can start up `gem server` or use `ri`

So, incentive. Really? I can tell you that of all the code I've written the
number of times I've documented it with YARD or RDoc because of a fear that it
would be auto-generated on each client and they'd see that is was found
wanting is precisely... zero. I document my projects because I want people to
use them, I don't want my inbox filled with questions on how to use it, and so
I can link to somewhere like rdoc.info where potential users can read it
online. I just don't buy that the auto-generation is working like a big scary
stick making developers write docs.

As for newbies, I doubt many genuine newbies have any idea of how to use `ri`.
Even if they did, you have actually know the class/method you want. At best
it's a reference, it's awful for just browsing around trying to piece things
together yourself. What I suspect most newbies do is go to Google and enter
"How to open a file in ruby", they don't `ri File.new`. The latter assumes a
reasonable (albeit forgetful) knowledge of the API, you can assume they're
more likely to know about --with-ri rather than the newbies knowing about
--no-ri.

The problem here really is that there is a not-insignificant number of people
who have all put this setting into their .gemrc file because they want it as
the default behaviour. Is it a representative sample of the community? How can
we find out? It certainly feels that rather than find out the support for this
addition was deemed a "circus of +1's", ignored, and closed.

I makes it had for me to feel sympathy towards the project, reluctant to offer
any changes I'd throw around for consideration, and grateful to see others
take the initiative to actually fix the problem (you with your mediation, and
then SlimGems as a possibly viable alternative).

~~~
sandal
The --no-rodc --no-ri issue is one I want to reopen for discussion at some
point, but I don't think it's as important as many of the other issues that
need to be discussed, nor is it urgent.

I agree with you that like many other things, this wasn't handled especially
well. I also think that a pull request with hundreds of +1's looks and feels
like a riot. That can't be the best way to draw someone's best emotions out of
them.

Please send me your thoughts, even if they don't lead to change in the current
atmosphere, they will be documented and shared so that if anything does
change, there will be a place to find them. Also, you'd be surprised how much
of the shutdown comes from these personally charged conflicts. Ryan and Eric
have given me an open ear. They should be turning that ear to their whole
userbase, but this is a start.

