RVM 2.0: Convert 20,000 lines of shell script into Ruby [Fundraiser]

https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/489

by ccverg • 13 years ago

69 59 13 years ago

khoury• 13 years ago

$50.000? I don't get the amount of cash needed. Not judging, just not understanding. Could someone explain and justify the need for this?

tinco• 13 years ago

Is not a crazy amount, you have to take into account that it will probably be a year or more before this port is even close to done. And then take into account the years of support he will probably offer.

That's not even thinking about all of the service they've provided to our community already.

I would argue it's on the low side, I sincerely hope he'll go over it.

reedlaw• 13 years ago

The number that got my attention was 20,000. That really seems extreme. What about the 40-liner Oh My Gems![1] And I wonder about the performance implications of porting all that shell script to ruby. Even running a single ruby command with a large set of gems increases loading time dramatically.[2]

1. http://blog.zenspider.com/blog/2012/09/ohmygems.html

2. https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368

carterparks• 13 years ago

$100/hr x 500 hours = $50,0000

$100/hr is a very conservative estimate for an hourly rate for a senior level Ruby engineer that can read and understand shell code and implement clean, well documented code.

500 hours also seems very reasonable given that they'd be rewriting 20,000 lines of Bash. Not an easy task.

mpapis3• 13 years ago

I plan on spending the next year working solely on RVM2, the fundraiser is updated with milestones => https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/489-rvm-2-0

moe• 13 years ago

Rvm is still around?

I switched to rbenv years ago, never looked back.

eaurouge• 13 years ago

I'm sorry, but why shouldn't RVM still be around? Did it suddenly become obsolete the minute you switched to rbenv?

bobbyi_settv5• 13 years ago

RVM shouldn't still be around because of its user-hostile behavior of modifying the user's dotfiles (.bashrc, etc.) on installation without warning or permission.

This breaks other software in confusing ways. For example, I've had cases where after installing it, I could not view man pages for any programs because installing RVM modified broke my $MANPATH. In other cases, things that were failing for other reasons started producing confusing errors due to RVM doing sketchy things like replacing cd with a shell function.

warmwaffles• 13 years ago

I tried switching to rbenv, but I kept getting frustrated with the process.

FooBarWidget8• 13 years ago

And this is exactly the problem with all those "simpler" alternatives to RVM. They all claim to be simpler and doing less "unnecessary" stuff.

And they are simpler, from a technical point of view. But unless you, the user, is very skilled at Unix and knows exactly how environment variables, shell sessions, bashrc etc works, it's going to be more confusing. RVM is more complicated because it does more, in order to make it easier for users. Notice that most of the people who like rbenv/chruby are exactly the kind of people who are already intimately familiar with the Unix environment.

I write C++ for a living and use the command line daily. Last time I used rbenv, I quickly gave up because I had to manually mess with $PATH, bashrc and other stuff that RVM always took care for me. I know how that stuff works, but the whole point of tools is to make my life easier. If I have to do so much stuff manually then why should I use rbenv? Back to RVM for me.

sergiotapia• 13 years ago

What's the difference, I'm curious. I learned RVM way back when, and haven't had the need to switch to be honest, but would love to learn.

tvon• 13 years ago

I suspect there is a lot of actively developed software out there that you do not use.

nbouscal3• 13 years ago

Alternatively, use <100 lines of shell script: https://github.com/postmodern/chruby

darkchasma• 13 years ago

Silly man, that wouldn't require $50,000.

FooBarWidget8• 13 years ago

RVM is larger and does a whole lot more than chruby. For one, it's much more friendly to new users and doesn't suffer from usability problems like these:

https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/212

https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213

scoot• 13 years ago

Or even better, rbenv: https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv

izietto• 13 years ago

Since I switched to rbenv I have never needed RVM

nbouscal3• 13 years ago

Better how? I used rbenv before using chruby and while rbenv is a huge improvement over RVM, I've found chruby to be a further improvement over rbenv.

unwind• 13 years ago

How does one write a page like that, without even trying to explain, in a single sentence, what "RVM" is? It surely wouldn't hurt?

I assume that if you don't know (like me), you're not in the target audience of people willing to chip in to get the conversion done, but it still manages to frustrate me.

bstar77• 13 years ago

It's definitely something only targeted to Ruby devs. If you use ruby, you know what RVM is.

To answer your question, RVM is a version manager for Ruby. http://rvm.io/

mpapis3• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback, I’ve updated the fundraiser description, it was so obvious to me what RVM is, it should be now clear what RVM does.

davidroetzel2• 13 years ago

I would love to hear more about "leverage existing package management systems".

I guess many people use rvm to install ruby and I always recommend newbies to try it out for that purpose.

But recent criticisms of ruby made me wonder if that really is the right approach. Maybe it would be better to put more effort into creating top-notch packages for the major linux distros (and, say, homebrew). And to work with the distributions on the stable packages, while offering official repositories to get the latest versions.

rvm could still play a role in this scenario as a tool to switch between versions, isolate gem installations and so on, offering a unified interface that hides the platform differences of the distros.

I would certainly donate to such a cause.

FooBarWidget8• 13 years ago

Creating proper platform-specific packages is a mad undertaking, requiring huge amounts of manpower to setup and to maintain. We provide native Phusion Passenger packages for 5 platforms (3 Ubuntu versions, 2 Debian versions, OS X Homebrew) and it's already crazy complicated. Check out the toolchain that we spent months on building:

https://github.com/phusion/passenger_apt_automation

https://github.com/phusion/passenger_autobuilder

And this is just one software package. Imagine at least 10 Ruby interpreters and versions (all versions of MRI 1.8, 1.9 and 2.0, all versions of Rubinius, all versions of JRuby). Now multiply that by the number of popular platforms. That's at least 13 (2 supported Ubuntu LTS versions, 1 latest Ubuntu non-LTS version, 2 supported Debian versions, latest 2 OS X versions, Windows, Red Hat, Fedora, CentOS, Arch, Gentoo). You'd end up with at least 100 different packages, and you'll have to test each one of them.

That's going to cost much more than a one-off campaign of $50000.

davidroetzel2• 13 years ago

Creating proper platform-specific packages is a mad undertaking, requiring huge amounts of manpower to setup and to maintain.

Of course you are right, and I am well aware of this. After all, that is the reason it has not been done before.

Still, a crazy amount of effort went into creating and maintaining rvm, rbenv and the myriad of other tools we now have. I cannot help but wonder where we would stand now had all of this instead been directed towards great packaging.

You'd end up with at least 100 different packages, and you'll have to test each one of them. That's going to cost much more than a one-off campaign of $50000.

I am not quite so pessimistic. What I am daydreaming about would involve the distributions and their package maintainers. They already ship ruby right now. The packages are just not in optimal shape and oftentimes not up to date.

But one can surely build on the foundation already laid out by the distributions and work with them to hand off some of the work.

Still, I know this would be a herculean task. And not only a technical challenge, but a social one as well.

kbenson• 13 years ago

Maybe that points to one source for the packages in many distros as the wrong way to go about it? You might be better off promoting a list of packages that repo maintainers (distro or secondary) could use to supply a well known set of ruby packages for a specific target. It's not like there's a shortage of people or institutions to do this if you make it easy for them.

brohee• 13 years ago

I don't know if creating top notch packages is too realistic, when the biggest difficulty with that is often the platform policy (e.g. insistence on separating documentation and runtime, even if it's more tightly coupled that it looks, having only one executable per package...) that is the biggest hurdle to overcome.

The fact that no platform got it right for Perl, Python nor Ruby points to a huge difficulty...

bobbyi_settv5• 13 years ago

Python works pretty well with system packages.

Few people compile Python from source in the way that is common for Ruby. People do use pip/ virtualenv, but those are more the equivalent of bundler/ RVM gemsets-- they manage libraries, not entire interpreters. It's a little confusing because virtualenv appears to have its "own" Python, but really it is a symlink to the (usually) system interpreter managed by the distro.

The major distros have representatives who are active on python-dev in working out any issues that may make integration difficult between Python and the distros.

nfoz• 13 years ago

What is RVM?

wlll• 13 years ago

Ruby Version Manager: https://rvm.io/

agumonkey• 13 years ago

I was affraid to ask, I always thought it was a codename for the Ruby Virtual Machine ..

ps : I was conflicted I couldn't believe ruby's vm would be built on 20K lines of bash. <relief/>

grogenaut2• 13 years ago

I would if RVM 1.0 didn't suck so much of my time away that I gave up and just went with vagrant.

driverdan• 13 years ago

Using vagrant in place of rvm is like killing a housefly with a hammer. Vagrant is great if you want to setup the whole app environment but using it just for rvm's functions is overkill.

grogenaut2• 13 years ago

yeah except try working on several projects where you have to use different rubies with different c libraries and compilers. RVM can't handle that. Vagrant can. rvm is like swatting at a housefly over and over and over and over and over and over and over and not killing it and nothing happening.

anonymous2• 13 years ago

Or, they could just learn shell scripting. How much would that cost?

I do not understand why the[1] shell... which is a relatively small language... is so difficult for people to learn.

If you can find the time to learn Ruby, what stops you from learning a shell? What is the cost of ignoring it?

1. Preferably something resembling the proposed POSIX standard which might lend to portability. Bash is not necessarily the best choice unless every server you will ever use will be GNU userland/Linux kernel.

mercurial2• 13 years ago

That's precisely the kind of dismissive comment I needed to read today. You don't seem to have read the link, in which the author makes good points for moving to Ruby, or think that somebody maintaining 20k of complex shell script should actually "learn shell scripting". I'm sure the author is well-informed about shell scripting. While it's certainly convenient in a pitch, it has little support for unit-testing, error handling or other things which are extremely useful to ensure a robust codebase.

anonymous2• 13 years ago

Well, since you seem to have insight as to the reasoning behind others' choices, perhaps you could enlighten us how someone came up with the idea of writing 20K lines of shell and passing it off to a community of Ruby developers as a "command line tool"?

lightningstorm• 13 years ago

Why we need rvm to install databases etc. when there is homebrew?

SmileyKeith3• 13 years ago

I think I'm missing something. If an operating system doesn't come with a version of Ruby installed at all, how would you run RVM if it was written in Ruby? Unless it came bundled with a version of Ruby, which sounds bad. I thought the entire point of having these systems written in bash was to make them usable _before_ having Ruby installed at all?

SmileyKeith3• 13 years ago

After thinking about this for more than 1 second I guess a large portion of RVM that works after you have Ruby installed, such as rvmsudo, could be based on Ruby. Leaving the setup code written in Bash.

bradleyland• 13 years ago

There's a Google Doc with a lot more detail as well:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xW9GeEpLOWPcddDg_hOPvK4o...

Your question is covered under "Bootstrapping"

Bootstrapping Using ruby should be possible thanks to binary rubies, in worst case we can fallback to static build or use JRuby. The binary Ruby (or static or JRuby) will be installed along with RVM 2 using very simple bootstrapping script written in shell most likely pure SH to provide compatibility with as much systems as possible

I had similar thoughts. The fact that RVM is implemented (currently) in shell means you don't need Ruby installed. It does, however, expose your tool to all the idiosyncrasies of someone else's shell environment.

I sit in #rvm on Freenode from time to time and the vast majority of trouble pings are related to differences in environment. That is to say, if you run a standard (as in, not heavily customized) environment, you won't have much trouble. There are a large number of users who really like to tweak their shell though, so RVM has to face the issue head on.

I think this is what has lead the team to the "bundled" approach. It sounds like RVM 2.0 will be a full-blown application, rather than a collection of scripts. The choice to build the application in Ruby, as opposed to something like C, seems obvious when you consider what it is. Ruby folks want to write Ruby.

happypeter• 13 years ago

RVM is already doing too much, and trying to do more. Sure there is no looking-back since I switched to rbenv a year ago.

And yes, so now I need to install ruby in order to install ruby?!

RVM 2.0: Convert 20,000 lines of shell script into Ruby [Fundraiser]

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