[Kde-bindings] how to distribute applications using korundum

[Stefano Crocco]

Hello to everyone
I'm finishing the first alpha version of my application using korundum. Now, 
the problem I'm facing is the following: how do I distribute it?

My first idea was to create a gem for it. I like this solution because:
a) it's familiar to ruby users (my application is for ruby developers)
b) it automatically installs other gems my application depends on.
Unfortunately, as far as I know, using rubygems has a serious drawback, that 
is you can't install .desktop files or icon files in the correct directory 
(like /usr/share, for example). I'm trying to find out whether there's some 
trick to force rubygems to install files outside the gems directory, but even 
if I found out a way, I'm not sure I'd feel comfortable to use it.

Another other possibility coming to my mind is to distribute it as a tarball 
and use CMake to build and install it. This has drawbacks, too:
a) it's more complicated to use than rubygems (unpack the tarball, create the 
build directory, run cmake, run make, run make install, against the semplicity 
of `gem install`)
b) it forces the user to manually install dependncies.

A third option could be to distribute the application as a gem, installing the 
.desktop file under the gems directory and tell the user to change the KDEDIRS 
environment variable to contain the installation directory. I don't like this 
too much because it's more work for the user, who should change the 
environment variable every time he installs a new version of the application, 
as the installation directory used by rubygems contains the version number.

Does anyone has any suggestion or advice on this matter? I've already asked on 
the ruby mailing list, but I received no answer so far.

Thanks in advance

Stefano