[libxml-devel] running tests from svn

[Aaron Patterson]

On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 1:07 PM, Trans <transfire at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Jul 11, 3:21 pm, "Aaron Patterson" <aaron.patter... at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> Separate scripts are more intuitive than rake tasks?
>
> I understand what you thinking, but there are some considerations
> involved. The reason we should use scripts rather than the Rakefile
> (whether it be via the traditional setup.rb script or through separate
> scripts as I have suggested) is because the end-installer ought not
> need Rake to preform an installation (Rake is not included in Ruby
> 1.8+, btw). Moreover, a rakefile is intended for project maintainers --
> it can have all sorts of maintainer tasks in it, including things like
> packaging, uploading, publishing the website, making an announcement,
> etc. There's no reason to provide an end user with these functions,
> just as some support files are not included in a package. Finally,
> setup.rb is not a simple script, and personally I wouldn't want to re-
> implement all that as a Rake task (though I have in fact gone down
> that path once, only to realize afterward that it was a pointless
> affair for the other reasons stated).

IMO, it seems like more work than its worth to support the few people
that don't have rake installed.  If a user has to make sure that gcc,
libxml, libiconv, zlib, ruby, etc are installed, why not rake?

-- 
Aaron Patterson
http://tenderlovemaking.com/