From: Roger Pack <rogerdpack2@...>
Date: 2011-07-03T04:40:34+09:00
Subject: [ruby-core:37746] Re: [Ruby 1.9 - Bug #4962][Open] come back gem_prelude!

is rubygems the root of the issue?
Also maybe it could come back as just
def require a
  begin
   old_require a
  rescue LoadError
   require 'rubygems'
   old_require a
  end
end

Cheers!
-roger-