From: Jano Svitok <jan.svitok@...>
Date: 2008-06-25T07:55:32+09:00
Subject: Re: Difference between site_ruby and gems

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 22:34, Cali Wildman
<caliwildman2004-info@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I am trying to understand the difference between site_ruby (Ruby
> extensions and libraries) and gems. I read that extensions are generally

site_ruby is directory for global addons for ruby.
.../lib/ruby/1.8 contains the default libraries
.../lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8 contains additional libraries - one of them
is rubygems.
.../lib/ruby/gems contains stuff for rubygems library (large part of
that stuff happens to be the installed gems)

site_ruby is a site-wide place (= for all users on that computer) for
additional libraries that is automatically on the search path.

> meant for more low-level type extensions usually written say in C.
> However, in my current setup, I use htree which is deployed as an
> extension but AFAIK written entirely in Ruby. Does anyone know why
> something like htree shouldn't be deployed as a gems instead?

Nobody packaged the lib as a gem yet. You may try yourself, and
eventually send the result to the author/maintainer.
Read the docs for rubygems, pick source for another gem, see how it is
done and imitate. Hoe/echoe gems might be
useful for the conversion - they provide templates etc.