Bug 1345886

Hi bex,

What is your justification please? I am asking, since I typically update the packages just in Rawhide, to prevent breaking user environments.

I had a need for a newer gem in F23.  I understand the desire to not put new versions of some software in older versions of Fedora, however I wonder what our advice is for users of current versions of Fedora who want updated Ruby library and don't want to run rawhide is.

This can be closed, but I would like your thoughts on this subject.  Thank you.

It depends who is "user" in your view.

In my view, user is installing all applications via "dnf install" and does not care about updates, as long as the packaged application works (more or less).

It seems that you are trying to use something which is not in Fedora and then it becomes more interesting (and I don't consider you just "user" anymore). I see several scenarios here:

1. If you want to have this packaged into RPM, you probably want to adjust the dependencies properly and fix possible compatibility issues.

2. You can provide Copr repo, with updated version of the library (but you still risk some incompatibilities with the official Fedora packages).

3. It is possible to consider some compat- or versioned version of library, e.g. in your case to update rubygem-eventmaching to the latest version and provide compat-rubygem-eventmachine or rubygem-eventmachine106, but this is maintenance burden.

4. If you want to use some application from git checkout or tarball, you might install as much packages as you can from Fedora repositories and install the remaining dependencies via "gem install" (or "bundle install" but Bundler tries to update every package in this case).

Actually there is always yet another case, use RVM to install Ruby and use Bundler to install all the gem dependencies. Then you need to fiddle with some missing -devel package dependencies etc, but I assume this is probably what you are trying to avoid ...

BTW I'd be really interested in your "user" story, since I am pretty sure I have some cognitive bias ...

My user story was that I am a developer.  I am working on an app that needed the newer version.  I was going to get it working and then package it as a container (iirc).  I don't use vagrant or a VM and was happy to have the system ruby updated.

I guess the question is what should a developer who wants to use newer stuff do?  What is the Fedora answer that works well?  Is the answer always a virtualization (RVM in this case?)?

I'd say that in this case you should work as regular Ruby developer, i.e. you should use RubyGems together with Bundler to manage your Ruby app dependencies. The workflow could look something like:

1. Start develop new application. Install all your dependencies via "dnf install rubygem-*".

2. You realize that you need more recent version of some package then available on Fedora, the you do just "gem update foo" (you might use Bundler and Gemfiles to manage the app dependencies, but don't use "bundler install/update" since Bundler always tries to update everything on the system, but you want to stick with Fedora versions probably).

3. Additionally, you can either run CI on Rawhide or once in a while try to check where Rawhide stands with the versions of your dependencies, since if Rawhide drifts away, you want to selectively update you local packages to keep in sync with future Fedoras.

4. If you want to add some new dependency, then again preferably use "dnf install" to get the system gem.

Also, you might try to use Rawhide packages on your stable system. This will work as long as there are not big changes in package guidelines and as long as the packages are noarch. For arch dependent packages, the Ruby version must be the same on Rawhide as on your version of Fedora, otherwise you might get pulled Rawhide version of Ruby and its dependencies on your system, that is probably not what you want.

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