From: Han Holl Date: 2007-08-29T18:22:14+09:00 Subject: Buglet in 'gem check --alien' Hello, Running 'gem check --alien' will fail if there is a gem installed with an empty file, like actionmailer-1.3.3 and others. The problem is in rubygems/validator.rb: format.file_entries.each do |entry, data| # Found this file. Delete it from list installed_files.delete remove_leading_dot_dir(entry['path']) File.open(File.join(gem_directory, entry['path']), 'rb') do |f| unless Gem::MD5.hexdigest(f.read).to_s == Gem::MD5.hexdigest(data).to_s errors[gem_name] << ErrorData.new(entry['path'], "installed file doesn't match original from gem") end end end An empty file will produce data as nil, which leads to a TypeError on the hexdigest(data). Adding 'data='' if data.nil?' helps, but may not be the best solution. Cheers, Han Holl