From: Intransition <transfire@...>
Date: 2010-05-18T00:40:57+09:00
Subject: Re: Is Bundler Overkill?



On May 15, 3:09 pm, Jeremy Kemper <jer...@bitsweat.net> wrote:
> You needn't redistribute every dependency with each app. You do have
> the option to conveniently package them all if you're deploying to,
> say, a shared host.

Is that a common need? I doubt I'd use a host that make it necessary
for me to handle it that way.

> RubyGems resolves gem dependencies at runtime. If an incompatible
> version is already activated, it raises an exception. This is a
> perfectly cromulent way to handle version conflicts for most people,
> most of the time.
>
> Bundler globally resolves the graph of gem dependencies at boot time
> instead of runtime. This handles the case where you use two libraries
> which depend on a common third library, but with overlapping version
> requirements. Resolving serially, at runtime, results in a version
> conflict, but resolving globally picks a version of the common third
> library that works for both.

Ah, that's interesting. I did not realize Bundler improves the
situation a bit by choosing a happy medium, if one exists. Now that i
know this, I would say it is the one truly significant feature that
Bundler provides. I would like to see RubyGems itself incorporate this
capability.

> 'This is the real heart of the matter, and it stems from the
> fundamental lack of version support in Ruby itself.'
>
> I don't understand your conclusion.

Ultimately it boils down to the fact that we cannot use two versions
of the same library in a single process. Ruby could support this, and
thus remove the need for much of this additional work.