On 1/8/07, Sven Panne
Am Montag, 8. Januar 2007 17:15 schrieb Justin Bailey:
[...] For example, if I want to install Rails (ruby web-app framework), I just type:
gem install rails
It's pretty slick.
How does this work with the native packaging mechanism on your platform (RPM, ...)? Does it work "behind it's back" (which would be bad)? Let's assume that "rails" needs "foo" and "bar" as well, which are not yet on your box. Does "gem install" transitively get/update all dependecies of "rails"?
Gems is pretty self-contained - gems can depend on other gems, with a variety of versioning options. If you try to install a gem that depends on others, you will be asked if you wish to install those first (unless the correct versions are already present on your machine). I use Windows so there isn't any other packaging system for it to interact with.