From: Sylvain Joyeux Date: 2007-11-21T18:12:15+09:00 Subject: Re: RubyGems 0.9.5 On Wed, Nov 21, 2007 at 08:09:18AM +0900, Eric Hodel wrote: >> Now I realize the paticular oddities of this are not necessarily >> RubyGems problems. I was using the Ubuntu patched version, but I've >> looked at that patch and all it did was hardcode the GEM_HOME >> environment variable to be /var/lib/rubygems. > > Yes, it is regrettable that Debian didn't instead add GEM_HOME to > /etc/profile (or equivalent). In that case (other than the /usr/lib vs > /usr/local/lib problem) upgrading RubyGems would Just Work. Maybe because they would have to do that for every conceivable shell lying around ? It does not seem practicle to me. In my opinion, the right solution would have been to make RubyGem read a global configuration file in /etc which defines sensible GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH values. Relying on environment variables is not doable system-wide. My guess is that they did not want to spend time digging into RubyGems code and writing the patch. -- Sylvain