Re: [ANN] Ruby Changes in Leopard

On Oct 27, 2007, at 11:03 AM, Richard Kilmer wrote:

> On Oct 26, 2007, at 2:33 PM, Giles Bowkett wrote:
>
>> we're going to have to manually update our Ruby installs just like we
>> had to last time **anyway**, because Ruby will probably change again
>> before OS X does. the "gem server" (not gem_server any more) example
>> illustrates exactly that problem, because it's already happened - the
>> new gems is in pre-release already.
>
> I really don't follow this line of reasoning.  Rubygems itself is  
> just a Ruby library and that Ruby library can be replaced/overridden.
>
> If you look at the load paths that Apple set in leopard:
>
> irb
> >> puts $:
> /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8
> /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/powerpc-darwin9.0
> /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8/universal-darwin9.0
> /Library/Ruby/Site
> /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ 
> 1.8
> /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ 
> 1.8/powerpc-darwin9.0
> /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/ 
> 1.8/universal-darwin9.0
> .
>
> The site dir normally is parallel to the standard ruby lib dir  
> something like:
>
> /usr/local/lib/ruby/1.8
> /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8
>
> But Laurent moved that on OS X into /Library/Ruby/Site.  So, if you  
> install a later rubygems in /Library/Ruby/Site/1.8 then it will  
> override the rubygems that is installed in the OS (and the 'gem'  
> command will use the one you upgraded first)
>
> Gems are the same way.  If you gem install/update a gem it will go  
> in /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 and higher version gems will always be  
> the ones loaded.
>
> What Apple did was provide a foundation that THEY can build upon  
> (in the OS) and we can update ourselves.  I think that is an  
> awesome balance.  They also built a bunch of native gems in that  
> are a PITA to build yourself by hand.
>
> Of course if you need within your Mac to always run the latest SVN  
> build of Ruby just download that source and build it and install it  
> wherever you want.
>
> Realize they could have totally screwed this up by reordering the  
> above load paths, but Laurent is a smart guy :-)
>
> Best,
>
> Rich
>
>

boy you nailed that one on the head. They did it for them.
Truth is, anybody seriously doing development in Ruby outside of  
something OS X 10.5-centric will probably need to create their own  
install at some point.

If you're doing RubyCocoa, it might be good to go with the stock  
install, since it is easily and predictably deployable.

If you're doing Rails or something to be deployed on a different  
platform, you'll be better with a custom setup.

It's no big deal. We still have Hivelogic for reminders!