[ruby-core:31911] Re: Avoiding $LOAD_PATH pollution

>> How confident are we that this API would be sufficient for replacing the
>> multiude of require hacks present in the various RubyGems replacements?

> I know of no successful RubyGems replacement that alters Kernel#require
> (rvm, bundler, isolate depend on RubyGems, RubyOpals never got off the
> ground, RPA is long dead).

Ah, OK. I thought I'd read about various libraries overriding `require`, and
chaos resulting, but I can't find the thread again, so was possibly
hallucinating.

Theoretically, the presence of arbitrary objects in $LOAD_PATH breaks backward
compatibility in that users may expect an Array of Strings. That's not a
significant hurdle, however.

In the proof of concept, the feature name may be an arbitrary object. I assume
this is unintentional, mainly because it couldn't be used with the '-r' switch
on the command-line.

FWIW, I like this idea. A loader could generate a feature by compiling a
third-party language on-the-fly. A GemMissing loader can sit at the head of
load path, and automatically install gems from a local repository as
needed. It's surely worth moving to the Features tracker and posting a pointer
on ruby-talk to encourage more comments.