From: Richard Kilmer <rich@...>
Date: 2003-12-24T04:25:39+09:00
Subject: Re: RubyGems and dependencies


On Dec 23, 2003, at 12:01 PM, Francis Hwang wrote:

> 1. If I use RubyGems to document a dependency to another gem then am I
> correct in thinking it's not enough to simply have had that library
> installed -- I explicitly need that gem, right? I mean, Lafcadio
> depends on REXML and when I try to install the Lafcadio gem it tells
> me it can't find the REXML gem. REXML is already installed (I'm using
> Ruby 1.8 so it's part of the std library) but I'll need to install the
> REXML gem so that my Lafcadio gem will work, right?

Gems dependency checking is only for other Gems.  If you have libraries
installed in the std lib or the site_ruby directory, you do not specify
a dependency on them (and Gems does not manage them).  Since REXML is
part of the std lib, and since that is the only thing you depend on, you
don't specify any Gems dependency.

-rich