On: SlimGems, a drop-in replacement for RubyGems -- now available

[jrockway]

Packaging is one of those things like indentation style and text editors: nobody can ever agree.

I know this is mostly designed to be Internet Drama ("I've saved the Ruby community from the RubyGems Cowboys! Yay for me! I'm cooler than _why!!"), but the reality is, everyone wants their own package manager. Every Linux distribution has their own. Perl has three CPAN clients, two of which are in the core!

Anyway, I think this is supposed to be a Big Deal, but it's not.

[endgame → jrockway]

Unlike brace style, package management is an NP-complete problem. See http://www.edos-project.org/xwiki/bin/Main/Deliverables , with further reading at http://www.mancoosi.org/papers/ .