motu-release will revert libgems-ruby to the old state.

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thursday 04 September 2008 21:13, Dustin Kirkland wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 7:46 PM, Mathias Gug <mathiaz at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> > On Thu, Sep 04, 2008 at 04:04:57PM +0200, Loïc Minier wrote:
> >>  No, I mean that it's not a policy violation to try to add the gem
> >>  binary path to PATH on a best effort basis because packages will
> >>  continue to work whether PATH has the gem binary patch or not.
> >>
> >>  I wish manually installed gems benefit the users of the system
> >>  (including the admin) and services as much as possible since someone
> >>  went through the hassle of installing the gems: it means they either
> >>  additional software or newer software available as gems.
> >
> > I assume you meant "it means they *want* either additional software or
> > newer software available as gems".
> >
> > Could the following statement be considered a corollary of the above ?
> >
> >  Binaries installed by the administrator should take precedence over
> >  binaries provided by packages.
> >
> > That's my interpretation of the following line in /etc/environment:
> >
> > PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/g
> >ames"
>
> My reading of the FHS on /usr/local/bin corroborates that.
>  * http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#USRLOCALLOCALHIERARCHY
>   * "The /usr/local hierarchy is for use by the system administrator
> when installing software locally."
>
> If an administrator wanted to install something above and beyond the
> normal Ubuntu packages, that would be his/her prerogative, and s/he
> should do that in /usr/local/bin.  This could certainly happen as any
> given untar/make/make-install (perhaps using --prefix), for
> self-written software, or as-yet unpackaged software for Ubuntu.

Personally, in the case of Gems, I think it's not problematic for a Gem that 
an admin has specifically installed to go in /usr/local for exactly these 
reasons.  Where I think the disagreement stems from is how to characterize 
the additional program that Gems will pull in with them.  I do not believe it 
is correct to characterize these as 'installed by the adminstrator'.  They 
were installed by the Gems system and should not be in the default path.

Scott K