On Debian it’s about the same… with Ruby 1.6 and Ruby 1.8 that is. One uses ruby1.8, and irb1.8 for Ruby 1.8 explicitly. It does not seem to use Debian’s alternative system for ruby and irb, rather the ruby-defaults package dictates debian’s defaults, so no symlinks or switching.

Ruby 1.9 is not in Debian yet, possible because of the sarge release, I don’t know.. there always has been a Ruby 1.7 until 1.8 came out AFAIK .

Regardless of distro some people find stow useful. I’ve never used it though.

Gentoo Linux, a laptop, and Ruby…what more could a guy want for developing web-apps?

The first things I emerge on a new Gentoo installation are ruby, cvs, and vim!

What more than Gentoo? That is what I thought for some time. Keep your eyes open for the imminent release of Heretix (successor Rubyx). It has source code goodness and an awesome package system. I will see about getting a ruby-config equivalent made once development is stabilized. Any other great ideas or requests can—the Heretix ML is not up yet—go to the Rubyx ML.

Brian M. : so why did Rubyx change it’s name to Heretix? Is it still written in Ruby?

As far as Gentoo goes, I really used to like like it (still do really). But when I tried to upgrade my Gentoo laptop to newer version of Gentoo it became a complete mess with lots of stuff broken (for example, KDE wouldn’t even start up anymore)... So I ended up installing Knoppix on it.

Phil: no problem with upgrade here .. my laptop is running Gentoo since more than 1 year without problem, and I just upgraded a desktop some time ago, that was not synchronized for more than 1 year .. It worked like a charm :)

Regarding the choose of the ruby version it’s fine .. The only drawback is the need to re-install every needed package for each version ..

Phil, Yes it is still in Ruby. Heretix is a complete rewrite and much more robust. “Heretix” hints at the fact that it is linux but takes a different approach than your usual distro. Init is in ruby, packaging is done with ruby (with many features—think gentoo portage in ruby but much cleaner). You can build bootable ISO ’s straight from the build system commands. Snapshots. Peer-to-peer networking used to distribute source and binaries (WhiteWater will be replaced DRUSS when ready). Clean base system (no kitchen sink included unless specified). Vanilla (no special patches that break things oddly). Multi-platform (IA32 and x86_64 might port to PPC archs).

News on the Rubyx-ML has it that we may have a wiki based off of rdoc and darcs (so we don’t dupe docs found in the source) soon. :-) Someone on the team will probably post to the r-t ML as I’m sure some are interested to hear about how Heretix has used ruby.

Once the wiki is up keep your eyes open for a road map and sub projects and a real description. [/plug]

Brian M.: Admitedly, I only check into it every six months or so, but I find that this Rubyx (now Heretix) project changes so much that it’s difficult to follow. Now you’re telling me that WhiteWater is being replaced by something called DRUSS . When will things settle down some? Aren’t you a bit worried that all this infrastructure shifting is just causing people to lose interest?

I have tried to make that point on the ML Phil. I hope things will settle down soon (or at least have a stable branch). Time will tell.

Unfortunately the www.rubyx.org site has never really been maintained. The new wiki style should make the new heretix site up to date.

Speaking of Ruby 1.9 and Debian; Akira has made preliminary Ruby 1.9 packages. They are available here.