[FooBarWidget]

So why don't you distribute your Ruby app without using RubyGems?

Look, I've never been able to understand the people who think RubyGems is a good distribution mechanism for end users either. But switching to another language altogether seems to throwing out the baby with the bathwater. You can just create a Debian package or something that depends on Ruby. That's exactly what we do with Phusion Passenger.

Have gem dependencies? Vendor them. Not that hard.

But if you have gem dependencies that contain native extensions that aren't distributed by the OS... well then switching to Go starts to make sense.

[mcdougle]

That's assuming everyone's using Ubuntu (or some other Debian-based OS)...

He actually did mention that in the post, though -- packaging Ruby into the installer -- and mentioned how difficult it is. I've never tried it myself, but I imagine it's pretty tough if, for example, you're distributing to Windows as well (although who uses CLI apps in Windows anymore...?)

[pjmlp]

Lots of us.

Many configurations are done via command line tools actually, more so since PowerShell exists.