7 ms·

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

69 points by ccverg 13y ago

khoury 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 http://blog.zenspider.com/blog/2012/09/ohmygems.html 2. https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368 https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368
- carterparks 13y 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.
- mpapis 13y 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 https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/489-rvm-2-0
moe 13y ago
Rvm is still around? I switched to rbenv years ago, never looked back.
- eaurouge 13y ago
  I'm sorry, but why shouldn't RVM still be around? Did it suddenly become obsolete the minute you switched to rbenv?
  - bobbyi_settv 13y 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.
    - FooBarWidget 13y 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. RVM tells the user very clearly that it has modified the user's dotfiles. And how many people do not want to modify the dotfile? Which user thinks, "oooh, modifying dotfiles is so evil, I'll just type in this command every single time I open a terminal"? At the end of the day, RVM just inserts a few lines to the dotfiles. What's the problem with that? Actually, chruby does not modify my dotfile for me, and I thought that modifying the dotfile is optional. I figured I'll just manually source chruby.sh every time I want to use it, just to experience how it's like. And then I ran into issues like this: https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather have the software modify my dotfile so that it can give me a pleasant user experience. > 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. Never seen these problems before. Have you reported these problems? Have they been fixed in the latest version? If these problems are fixable then why throw the baby out with the bath water? As for replacing cd with a shell function: it's because it's one of the few ways auto-switching can be implemented. They found in a user survey that 80% of the users want auto-switching, so who are they to say "no" to their users? What problems have you experienced because of this? chruby's auto.sh implements the same functionality by installing itself into the shell's DEBUG hook... but is that really any better?
nbouscal 13y ago
Alternatively, use <100 lines of shell script: https://github.com/postmodern/chruby https://github.com/postmodern/chruby
- darkchasma 13y ago
  Silly man, that wouldn't require $50,000.
  - FooBarWidget 13y 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/212 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213
    - nbouscal 13y ago
      RVM doesn't suffer from those specific usability problems, but it most certainly does suffer from usability problems. I've wasted many, many hours debugging issues caused by RVM. For the most part, those issues are because RVM is larger and does a whole lot more than chruby, and since switching I haven't once missed any of those extra features.
- scoot 13y ago
  Or even better, rbenv: https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv
  - izietto 13y ago
    Since I switched to rbenv I have never needed RVM
  - nbouscal 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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/ http://rvm.io/
- mpapis 13y 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.
davidroetzel 13y 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.
- FooBarWidget 13y 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_apt_automation https://github.com/phusion/passenger_autobuilder 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.
  - davidroetzel 13y 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.
nfoz 13y ago
What is RVM?
- wlll 13y ago
  Ruby Version Manager: https://rvm.io/ https://rvm.io/
- agumonkey 13y 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/>
grogenaut 13y 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 13y 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.
  - grogenaut 13y 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.
anonymous 13y 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.
- mercurial 13y 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.
  - anonymous 13y 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"?
    - mercurial 13y ago
      Insight comes simply from having read the linked page. But at a guess, I'd say it comes from "let's do something small and simple in bash" combined with a bad case of incremental feature creep.
lightningstorm 13y ago
Why we need rvm to install databases etc. when there is homebrew?
SmileyKeith 13y 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?
- SmileyKeith 13y 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 13y ago
    There's a Google Doc with a lot more detail as well: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xW9GeEpLOWPcddDg_hOPvK4oeLxJmU3Q5FiCNT7nTAc/edit?pli=1 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.
    - SmileyKeith 13y ago
happypeter 13y 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?!

69 points by ccverg 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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 http://blog.zenspider.com/blog/2012/09/ohmygems.html 2. https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368 https://twitter.com/garybernhardt/status/388758868559290368
carterparks 13y 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.
mpapis 13y 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 https://www.bountysource.com/fundraisers/489-rvm-2-0

moe 13y ago

Rvm is still around? I switched to rbenv years ago, never looked back.

eaurouge 13y ago
I'm sorry, but why shouldn't RVM still be around? Did it suddenly become obsolete the minute you switched to rbenv?
- bobbyi_settv 13y 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.
  - FooBarWidget 13y 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. RVM tells the user very clearly that it has modified the user's dotfiles. And how many people do not want to modify the dotfile? Which user thinks, "oooh, modifying dotfiles is so evil, I'll just type in this command every single time I open a terminal"? At the end of the day, RVM just inserts a few lines to the dotfiles. What's the problem with that? Actually, chruby does not modify my dotfile for me, and I thought that modifying the dotfile is optional. I figured I'll just manually source chruby.sh every time I want to use it, just to experience how it's like. And then I ran into issues like this: https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 Thanks but no thanks. I'd rather have the software modify my dotfile so that it can give me a pleasant user experience. > 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. Never seen these problems before. Have you reported these problems? Have they been fixed in the latest version? If these problems are fixable then why throw the baby out with the bath water? As for replacing cd with a shell function: it's because it's one of the few ways auto-switching can be implemented. They found in a user survey that 80% of the users want auto-switching, so who are they to say "no" to their users? What problems have you experienced because of this? chruby's auto.sh implements the same functionality by installing itself into the shell's DEBUG hook... but is that really any better?

nbouscal 13y ago

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

darkchasma 13y ago
Silly man, that wouldn't require $50,000.
- FooBarWidget 13y 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/212 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213 https://github.com/postmodern/chruby/issues/213
  - nbouscal 13y ago
    RVM doesn't suffer from those specific usability problems, but it most certainly does suffer from usability problems. I've wasted many, many hours debugging issues caused by RVM. For the most part, those issues are because RVM is larger and does a whole lot more than chruby, and since switching I haven't once missed any of those extra features.
scoot 13y ago
Or even better, rbenv: https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv https://github.com/sstephenson/rbenv
- izietto 13y ago
  Since I switched to rbenv I have never needed RVM
- nbouscal 13y 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 13y 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 13y 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/ http://rvm.io/
mpapis 13y 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.

davidroetzel 13y 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.

FooBarWidget 13y 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_apt_automation https://github.com/phusion/passenger_autobuilder 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.
- davidroetzel 13y 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.

nfoz 13y ago

What is RVM?

wlll 13y ago
Ruby Version Manager: https://rvm.io/ https://rvm.io/
agumonkey 13y 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/>

grogenaut 13y 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 13y 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.
- grogenaut 13y 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.

anonymous 13y 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.

mercurial 13y 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.
- anonymous 13y 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"?
  - mercurial 13y ago
    Insight comes simply from having read the linked page. But at a guess, I'd say it comes from "let's do something small and simple in bash" combined with a bad case of incremental feature creep.

lightningstorm 13y ago

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

SmileyKeith 13y 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?

SmileyKeith 13y 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 13y ago
  There's a Google Doc with a lot more detail as well: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xW9GeEpLOWPcddDg_hOPvK4oeLxJmU3Q5FiCNT7nTAc/edit?pli=1 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.
  - SmileyKeith 13y ago

happypeter 13y 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?!