site_ruby

[Daniel DeLorme]

Can anyone explain what the site_ruby directory is for? Why use that directory
instead of /usr/local/lib/ruby/ ? Only rubygems seems to use that directory.

 

[Trans]

Can anyone explain what the site_ruby directory is for? Why use that directory
instead of /usr/local/lib/ruby/ ? Only rubygems seems to use that directory.

Well, that's a good question. One point is that /usr/local/lib/ruby is
where ruby's standard libs are installed (if local install, otherwise
/usr/lib/ruby) it's really only by the grace of the version folder
(1.8) that gems can use this location cleanly. Unfortunately Debian
packages completely ignore this distinction and install ruby packages
right in there with the standard lib --which makes it impossible to
distingusih standard libs from non-standard (not nice).

A recent discussion indicated that the the FHS would have us place
these files in /usr/share/ruby or /usr/local/share/ruby. And sure
enough that's what Perl does --though it seems wrong to me. I would
think /usr/lib/ruby/site and /usr/local/lib/ruby/site, along side gem,
would be optimal.

T.

 

[Michael Greenly]

Ahh I failed to notice, well I realized that apt-get was not going well
with
gem, good to know why.
That amongst other problems I have posted about recently have driven me
to
switch from Sarge to Gentoo in our
network of routers and firewalls.

It's possible to mix the two just fine.

Install ruby from apt normally.

When you install rubygems just use something like:

ruby setup.rb --prefix=/usr/local --siteruby=/usr/local/lib/site_ruby

Then add /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/gems/bin to the $PATH

Everything behaves as expected.

I wish there was a way to specifc where rubygems put the executables of
gems it installs. then I would just set it to /usr/local/bin and not
bother with having to modify $PATH but I haven't found a way to do that