People are often confused when a particular plugin fails to install or run but it is unclear what is the missing dependency. These can range from a c compiler to client libs. I'd like to see that kind of information make their ways into the gemspec even if we can't auto install them we should call them out.
I think there are a couple approaches:
- as the plugins have been having testing slowly rolled out to them I have been including a
bootstrap.sh that installs various packages that are needed to run it
- use gem metadata
I think requirements seems like a logical place to call these out in a uniform way. As this offers a better programmatic interface I think this makes the most sense but I am open to hear what others think.
I can think of several advantages of using the metadata for users and maintainers. For example if I wanted to query all the packages that require a compiler I could do that much easier through the rubygems api then parsing through some ad-hoc bootstrap scripts that may include other things like development/testing dependencies that are not needed for production.
People are often confused when a particular plugin fails to install or run but it is unclear what is the missing dependency. These can range from a
ccompiler to client libs. I'd like to see that kind of information make their ways into the gemspec even if we can't auto install them we should call them out.I think there are a couple approaches:
bootstrap.shthat installs various packages that are needed to run itI think requirements seems like a logical place to call these out in a uniform way. As this offers a better programmatic interface I think this makes the most sense but I am open to hear what others think.
I can think of several advantages of using the metadata for users and maintainers. For example if I wanted to query all the packages that require a compiler I could do that much easier through the rubygems api then parsing through some ad-hoc bootstrap scripts that may include other things like development/testing dependencies that are not needed for production.