Debian/Ruby Extras - Ruby Policy

Debian Ruby Policy

This document SHOULD NOT be considered a policy yet. It is only a support for discussion. Other documents worth reading:

• Debian Ruby Policy: a draft policy written by the pkg-ruby alioth team.
• Debian Python Policy: an interesting read, since Python shares several problems with Ruby.

Packaging Variants

There are two ways to package Ruby modules:

1. Support only the default Ruby version.
2. Support several Ruby versions.

Support only the default Ruby version

• Name you package libfoo-ruby.
• Depend on ruby (>= 1.X), ruby (<< 1.X+1) (you will trigger a conflict when the default Ruby version is changed, so you will have to provide a new version ASAP, since your package will block the upgrade of Ruby).

Support several Ruby versions

• Create a package libfoo-ruby which depends on libfoo-ruby1.X (1.X being the default Ruby version).
• Create libfoo-ruby1.X, libfoo-ruby1.Y for each Ruby version you want to support.

Documentation and Examples

• If the documentation for your library is small enough, put in in libfoo-ruby (even if you are supporting several Ruby versions).

• If the documentation is too big, provide it in libfoo-ruby-doc, and make all other packages suggest libfoo-ruby-doc.