Comment 6 for bug 228345

> The gem command *is* a completely integral part of ruby1.9. Removing
> it is like removing the standard library or the interpreter itself.

nobody is talking about removing gem1.9. It's just going to be packaged separately, to allow other packages to depend only on what they need.

> There is a great need to start treating gem with the respect that ruby
> developers expect, rather than this continuing attempt to treat it as
> some sort of side issue. It's like trying to hold back the tide and is
> already causing massive problems in using both Debian and Ubuntu as a
> basis for any sort of Ruby operation. It's deeply frustrating.

"massive problems"? "deeply frustrating"? Seriously, gem is one "apt-get install gem1.9" away. If that causes massive problems and deep frustation to you, you clearly have a problem.

> Every serious ruby developer has gem installed. Every serious ruby
> program going forward will use gems. I see no value at all in
> splitting it out.

Feel free to install ruby from sources if you don't like the way it's packaged in Debian/Ubuntu. So you get the same amount of support for ruby and third party libs you install through gems.

(Btw, interesting post on this topic: http://www.madstop.com/ruby/ruby_has_a_distribution_problem.html )