"Erik Veenstra" <google / erikveen.dds.nl> writes:

> When you set RUBYOPT to "rubygems", library ubygems is
> automatically required before starting the application. You
> don't have to do a require of (r)ubygems in the application
> itself anymore. If the application doesn't require rubygems
> internally, it can only run in an environment in which RUBYOPT
> is set to "rubygems".
>
> What happens when such an application is shipped to a machine
> which does have rubygems and the right gems, (so it should be
> able to run perfectly), but doesn't have RUBYOPT set to require
> rubygems? The only solution to get such an application to work
> (out of the box) is to set RUBYOPT as well, which does affect
> the other applications...
>
> It just doesn't feel good...

Still better than forcing the other users to have gems installed...
IMO, the best thing is

  begin
    require 'rubygems'
  rescue LoadError
  end

> gegroet,
> Erik V.
-- 
Christian Neukirchen  <chneukirchen / gmail.com>  http://chneukirchen.org