On 4/30/05, caleb clausen <google@[...].net>  wrote:
>  On Fri, 29 Apr 2005 07:52:54 +0900, Bill Guindon wrote:
>  
>  > On 4/28/05, caleb clausen <google@[...].net> wrote:
>  >> I've tried a couple of times to install all the rubygems packages.
>  >> Inevitably, I run into a problem with a gem that's either broken or
>  >> incompatible with something else. Can anyone please give me some
>  >> instructions for installing all (or as many as possible rubygems?
>  >>
>  >
>  > Somebody's gotta ask the obvious question... Why would you want to?
>  >
>  > Really, I'm curious.
>  
>  My goal is not just to make trouble, nor do I just want to have more toys
>  than anybody else. (Tho the idea does appeal to me....)
>  
>  I'm trying to test RubyLexer. Part of RubyLexer's tests include a script
>  that can dertermine (not certainly, but with a high degree of accuracy)
>  whether RubyLexer is lexing a particular piece of source code in exactly
>  the same way as ruby itself. I've run this script (and fixed the problems
>  it found) against every bit of ruby source I could find on my system, and
>  now I'm looking for more.
>  
>  I want to make a parser as well, and I'll need to test that. I think
>  there's a variation of my current test strategy that will tell me, for an
>  arbitrary source file, whether it has been parsed correctly.
>  
>  Basically, rubygems will all be a sort of ad-hoc language test suite.
>  
>  This is the sort of thing that's very easy in Debian. That's how I got all
>  Debian packages that depend on ruby, which form part of my collection
>  already. I don't know the reason, maybe because there's more qc of
>  packages upfront, or because apt checks for problems before even
>  downloading, or because installation of one package doesn't abort the
>  whole process. But handing off a long list of packages, some of which are
>  bad or broken, to apt-get works very smoothly. Not so with rubygems. I
>  realize Debian is a much more mature system... I'm really just looking for
>  a workaround. If a package is too broken to install, I don't want it.
>  Maybe there's someone out there with lots of gems already installed who
>  can give me a list of non-broken packages?

Forgive the delayed reply, somehow gmail buried this one.

Ahh, I feel better knowing that there actually was a logical reason
for doing what seemed quite strange :)

Might pay to sign up for the gem developers mailing list [1].   It's
an interesting problem, and finding some solution to it would be
helpful (ie: some system for marking stability, etc. -- or gracefully
skipping failed installs)

[1] http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubygems-developers

-- 
Bill Guindon (aka aGorilla)