Optional Dependencies in Rubygems

[Chris Carter]

Ok, so after the long Hoe discussion, I have decided to add
optional/developer-time dependencies to ruby-gems.

The first implementation will be purely for developer-dependencies,
not for optional "This will be faster with blah blah blah"
dependencies, for the time being, but I do plan to leave the API
addition open enough so other styles of dependencies can be added.

I would like to know what kind of behaviour for installing the
optional dependencies should be. I believe that when normally
installing a gem, it should not prompt you at all to install or warn
of the optional dependencies, because they are developer dependencies.
Ideas for cmd line flags?

 

[Alex Young]

Ok, so after the long Hoe discussion, I have decided to add
optional/developer-time dependencies to ruby-gems.

The first implementation will be purely for developer-dependencies,
not for optional "This will be faster with blah blah blah"
dependencies, for the time being, but I do plan to leave the API
addition open enough so other styles of dependencies can be added.

I would like to know what kind of behaviour for installing the
optional dependencies should be. I believe that when normally
installing a gem, it should not prompt you at all to install or warn
of the optional dependencies, because they are developer dependencies.
Ideas for cmd line flags?

The obvious one: you've already got -y/--include-dependencies, so why
not -Y/--include-all-dependencies (or --include-optional-dependencies)?
I can't think of a situation where you'd want the optional but not the
required dependencies, but being able to list them prior to installing
them would be nice.