From: Richard Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2004-09-16T13:07:41+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] RubyGems 0.8.0

I STRONGLY suggest the RUBYOPT thing.  And, because rubygems starts with an
'r' we actually have a file named ubygems.rb which enables:

ruby -rubygems

And the RUBYOPT can be: rubygems

So the double 'r' is not necessary.

But like Chad said, this feature lets you just use a standard 'require'
statement on any file in any gem and it does an automatic 'require_gem' for
you transparently.  To do this we override the require method.  So, if in
your scripts you perform a bogus require you may get a message like:

irb(main):001:0> require 'foo'
LoadError: No such file to load -- foo
        from 
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require__'
        from 
/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/loadpath_manager.rb:5:in
`require'
        from (irb):1

You notice the double require and require__ in the call stack.  This is what
enables our transparency.

If you need to require a gem of a prior version though, you can still use
require_gem "GemName", "= x.y.z" to get that version.  The require hack
always loads the latest version.

Best,

Rich

On 9/15/04 11:55 PM, "Chad Fowler" <chad@chadfowler.com> wrote:

> Instead of cluttering up the site_ruby directory with library/stub
> files, we can now load library files out of any installed gem without
> having to "require_gem" first.  However, you'll have to first "require
> 'rubygems'" in order for this functionality to work.  The easiest way
> to do this is to either pass "-rrubygems" on ruby's command line or set
> your RUBYOPT environment variable to include "rrubygems".  The
> rubygems.rb file itself has been made to be VERY lightweight, so it
> should not be intrusive to load.