From: Austin Ziegler <halostatue@...>
Date: 2005-12-02T23:27:02+09:00
Subject: Re: Is there any relevant difference between require and require_gem?

On 12/2/05, Lars Olsson <lasso@lassoweb.nu> wrote:
> When using Rubygems, is there any *relevant* difference between using
> require and require_gem (aside from the versioning possibilities)?
> According to the docs require searches the standard library first. Is
> this true for require_gem too, or does that method only search the gem
> repository? Is is faster?
>
> Example:
> require 'rubygems'
>
> # Is any of the two methods below "better" in any way?
> require 'sqlite3'
>
> # Or
>
> require_gem 'sqlite3-ruby'

Yes. require_gem, at least for some gems, and *definitely* for future
versions of PDF::Writer and other packages that I write will only
require the gem. It will not autorequire the core functionality as it
does now.

-austin
--
Austin Ziegler * halostatue@gmail.com
               * Alternate: austin@halostatue.ca