From: James Britt <ruby@...>
Date: 2005-09-29T01:02:02+09:00
Subject: Re: gems is a language change, not a pkging system (Re: Require	Namepaces and RubyGems' effect on LoadPath problem)

Tom Copeland wrote:
> On Wed, 2005-09-28 at 20:56 +0900, Sean E. Russell wrote:
> 
>>Incidentally, last time I checked, Gems *still* didn't work behind an 
>>authenticating firewall, despite the fact that I can get through with wget 
>>--proxy-user.  There is nothing -- NOTHING -- worse than trying to install 
>>something that depends on a library that is *only* distributed via a gemfile.  
>>This makes the package impossible to install.
> 
> 
> Hm... I think you can download the Gem that the library depends on and
> do a install with:
> 
> gem install --local foo.gem


Yes, and I think gems' behavior in this is regard is no worse, and 
possibly better, than installing a lib using install.rb, in the cases 
where the installation process complains that you are missing a 
dependency.  You again have to go find something on the 'net and 
download it by hand.

Indeed, if you omit rubygem's ability to fetch things via http, and were 
required to copy all gems locally before installing, it becomes little 
different than running tar -xzvf and then install.rb.  Except gems are 
easier.


James