ruby_select experimental implementation

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 22, 2009, at 17:02, Rainer Müller wrote:

> kimura wataru wrote:
>
>> I write experimental ruby_select for ruby186 and ruby18.
>>
>>   http://trac.macports.org/browser/users/kimuraw/ruby_select
>
> Will ruby19 be moved to ruby? Or what will happen to the existing ruby
> port at all?
>
> I would like to avoid the situation we created with python, where we
> have only the versioned ports. Currently if you install many ports
> dependencies will pull in all of python24, python25 and python26.
> Something like this should be avoided. And maybe there should also  
> be a
> "default" python version.

I don't think I agree. There isn't a port sqlite; there's sqlite2 and  
sqlite3. We used to have a port mysql but it was decided to remove it  
to avoid confusion and allow the user to select among mysql3, mysql4  
and mysql5. There isn't a port php; there's php4 and php5.  There  
isn't a port postgresql; there's postgresql7, 80, 81, 82, 83. There  
isn't a port db; there's db3, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47. There isn't  
a port gcc; there's gcc33, 34, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45.


> I am not against providing multiple versions and allow switching,  
> but we
> should avoid creating a dependency hell where multiple available
> versions are pulled in unecessary as happened for python.

The only thing that comes to my mind is to update the dependencies of  
ports, when they're found to be out of date. If you find a port  
depending on python24 or php4 or db41 or gcc40 etc. then try to  
update it to the latest version. Of course sometimes this can't be  
done. For example pdftk cannot currently be compiled with gcc 4.3 or  
later so it uses gcc42.