From: "Luke A. Kanies" <luke@...>
Date: 2004-07-27T23:48:07+09:00
Subject: Re: Core support for Gems, and namespace

On Tue, 27 Jul 2004, Dave Thomas wrote:

> 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 don't understand how versioning solves the problem of being forced to 
import an extra library (gems) every time I run a script.

The stub that gets installed is essentially a sufficient answer; my main 
concern was that I didn't want coders to be forced to either choose 
between gems libraries and normal libraries, or have every 'require' 
statement be a set of tests looking for one or the other.

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

Cool, a new one. :)

-- 
"A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any invention in
human history--with the possible exceptions of handguns and tequila."
                 -- Mitch Ratcliffe
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