From: Ryan Leavengood <mrcode@...>
Date: 2001-12-30T13:23:56+09:00
Subject: [ruby-talk:29699] [ANN] RubyGems 0.4 Addendum

Sorry for the lack of information in the earlier announcement.  For those
who don't know:

RubyGems is a system for packaging Ruby libraries (and eventually
applications) into a single file that also contains metadata about that
library.  The metadata includes the author's name, a version number,
category, dependencies, etc.  The RubyGems system makes use of the "gem"
files without extraction, making installation of gems as simple as a file
copy.  The system overrides the "require" method as well, such that after a
simple "require 'rubygems'", any files contained within gems can be required
just like any other library on Ruby's LOADPATH.  Therefore the use of gems
is as transparent as possible.

RubyGems was created due to the difficultly sometimes associated with
finding and installing Ruby libraries.  In the future the RubyGems system
should allow a Ruby user to easily find, download, and install Ruby
libraries and applications packaged as gems, just as Debian Linux users make
use of apt-get to install libraries and applications.

If you are interested in RubyGems please go to this page:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/rubygems.

Ryan Leavengood