Re: [PATCH/RFC 0/7] Support for Ruby

From: brian m. carlson <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net>
Date: Sep 21, 2013, 23:56 UTC
Message-ID: <20130921235647.GC235845@vauxhall.crustytoothpaste.net>
In-Reply-To: <CAMP44s3Shdg40go-WyGV8QKwEGoXg8hvEe8tetMyxvx5Sb7evw@mail.gmail.com>

On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 05:52:05PM -0500, Felipe Contreras wrote:

Show 10 quoted lines

> On Sat, Sep 21, 2013 at 4:29 PM, brian m. carlson
> <sandals@crustytoothpaste.net> wrote:
> > As Junio has also pointed out in the past, there are people who aren't
> > able to use Ruby in the same way that they are Perl and Python.  If it's
> > announced now, Git 2.0 might be a good time to start accepting Ruby
> > scripts, as that will give people time to plan for its inclusion.
> 
> Yes, and there are people who aren't able to use Perl/Python in the
> same way they use Ruby. That's why I tried to show why Ruby makes a
> perfect choice.

I'm not arguing against Ruby. As I said, it's a nice language. I'm just saying that Ruby is not as common as Perl and Python. For example, in Debian, Perl is Essential (cannot be removed), Python is priority standard, and Ruby is priority optional.

I think it's a bad idea to introduce an entirely new runtime, especially one known to occasionally blow up on less-common architectures, without some advance notice. For example, at work I would not be able to deploy a git using Ruby immediately because Git is an RPM and Ruby is compiled from source, if it is even present at all.

Also, the only Python script that is shipped with Git is git-p4, which is essentially optional, since most git users probably do not use Perforce. Otherwise, all the scripts in git are shell or Perl. So this would be adding a significant additional dependency to core git, one which is likely not installed on many systems. Of the systems in the Debian popularity contest, 41% have git installed and 23% have ruby1.8 installed, with only 16% having the default ruby installed.

> Now, if anybody has ideas into how the bindings could be more object
> oriented, I'm all ears, but unfortunately what I foresee is that
> nobody will consider this proposal seriously.

My concern is that the Ruby code will end up not being idiomatic, and people will view it as bizarre and unmaintainable.

for_each_ref could end up being something like REPOSITORY.refs.each, which would be more idiomatic. repository.refs would probably be an Enumerator in that case. If the decision is made to incorporate Ruby code, I'm happy to submit some patches to help provide a sane interface, even though I'm not that familiar with Ruby.

-- 
brian m. carlson / brian with sandals: Houston, Texas, US
+1 832 623 2791 | http://www.crustytoothpaste.net/~bmc | My opinion only
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