Engine Yard's sponsorship of RVM is coming to an end

Engine Yard's sponsorship of RVM is coming to an end
rvm.io

> Tools like rbenv or chruby can work well in simple scenarios, especially if you’re very skilled with the Unix shell. However, as environments and dependencies grow in complexity, these tools quickly become inadequate. RVM seems more “complicated” because it does a lot more to make handling these scenarios easy.

> To paraphrase Jonathan Jackson, RVM is to Rails as rbenv is to Sinatra. Sinatra is a lightweight framework whereas Rails is much more robust. Sometimes Sinatra just fits, and other times you'd be a fool to not go with Rails.

I think people with complicated scenarios have had... mixed experiences with whether rvm really makes complex scenarios easy. I suspect many people with complex scenarios prefer a simple tool like rbenv or chruby (disclosure: I prefer chruby having worked with all three), which they can then figure out themselves how to invoke to do exactly what they need.

It may be that some people with complex scenarios prefer rvm. It would be interesting to hear from them. (for real! I'd be interested!)

But I suspect that the bulk of rvm users are not actually sophisticated users with complicated scenarios, but instead beginner users with fairly simple scenarios. For a variety of reasons. Becuase rvm is what you find when you google. Because rvm holds out the promise of not making you understand anything about what it's doing or anything about bash or shell environment, and having it Just Work (whether it fulfills that promise... especially in non-simple scenarios... there are mixed opinions. There are definitely some people who have moved from rvm to rbenv or chruby in fact as their environments have grown in complexity, and they had trouble figuring out how to get rvm to work in their environments. ).

People try to be really sensitive not to insult rvm. And I've tried to be sensitive here, while still saying what I perceive. Lots of people like rvm, for sure. And rvm was first, and a huge boon compared to the no options that preceeded it. And nobody wants to be rude, or get into a fight. But people's sensitivity and desire to avoid controversy also means when you google around... you pretty much just find rvm, even though some (many? I don't know) have in fact moved from rvm to chruby and rbenv -- including sometimes moving as their environments become more complicated.

I am not sure it's accurate to say that developers routinely find chruby or rbenv "quickly become inadequate" as environments and dependencies grow in complexity ('quickly'? really?).