With JRuby, you can package up your application along with a specific version of every library you use into a single file, and only distribute that file. The target systems need nothing more than a JDK installed, which is easily available on any Linux flavor and preinstalled on many.

I sympathize, but using JRuby really does make this all go away.

Two things come to mind, though.

1st. GitHub > CPAN or similar hubs.

Every project on GitHub seems to attract enough developers to keep things changing at a fast pace to the detriment of steady maintenance. Plus, new projects being developed all the time, sometimes doing something similar but in a different way. Give it users and suddenly the new piece is to replace some older one to most users.

That’s to say that maintenance is taking a back-seat to aggressive development.

2nd. Linux distros take forever to package up new versions of programming tools. Ruby has been affected by that slowness for a while. It’s true that moving from Ruby 1.8 to 1.9 hasn’t helped with matters. The promise for Ruby 2.0 is that it will keep backwards compatibility with 1.9, if that helps.

Ruby 1.9 brought many changes to the language and that also put the alternative Ruby implementations under pressure as they tried to cope with being great 1.8 implementations and still move forward. In some ways it has been as painful as Python moving from 2.x to 3.x.

The issues affecting Ruby have also been affecting other programming communities. Stability hasn’t been the norm.

Good luck to us.

Cheers,
Joao

I am so jealous of this dinner, esp. your cheese tray, but these pictures look fantastic. You say that your cheeses were the best course, but every course here looks like an adventure. It remminds me of the dining room at the Ritz-Carlton buckhead which has bitten the dust here in ATL (sadly).

I saw your shout out about your MacCallan 18 on the rocks and had to comment:

I’ll tell you a secret about my scotch drinking. I got a bottle of cask strength Laphroig 10 for Christmas and the carton recommended putting a certain measure of water in the scotch: 2:1 if you can beleive that, and it did help bring out some of the more delicate flavors. So if it’s recommended for McCallan to put ice cubes, then go for it. Most scotches, when had at a true scotch tasting event, are had at room temperature and sometimes with a splash of spring water. However, there aren’t any rules as to how you prefer to enjoy scotch. I maintain that you get more of the flavor of most scotches when you drink them at room temperature, but that’s the whiskey snob talking. I like my rye and bourbon on the rocks and my scotch room temp. Straight if normal proof and with some filtered water if cask strength. You go on with your bad rocks in your scotch. I’ll keep being the whiskey snob.

Chup

Chup