From: Dave Thomas <dave@...>
Date: 2004-07-27T11:58:22+09:00
Subject: Re: Core support for Gems, and namespace


On Jul 26, 2004, at 21:39, Luke A. Kanies wrote:

> I'm looking at the Gems stuff, and it seems that all scripts will have 
> to clearly differentiate between libraries installed with gem vs. 
> those installed by hand.  Is it true that I, as a script writer, will 
> have to know whether my eventual user installed libraries as Gems?  
> Even worse, is it true that all scripts are likely to import the gems 
> libraries?  Why is not possible to just put all gems in a specific 
> directory, and add that directory to the library search path?  Does 
> anyone know why this feature set was chosen?

The answer to the second part of your question is versioning. The 
answer to the first part is the later version of gems, which 
automatically install stubs into the Ruby library directories. This 
means that

    require 'mylib'

will work if mylib was installed as a gem or regularly.

(I only know this because I've been reading the chapter on Gems that 
Chad wrote for the new Pickaxe)

Cheers

Dave