Richard Kilmer <rich / infoether.com> wrote:
> library system does not.  I mean, as a short term solution we could
> create a Gem that picks up the Ruby version and you just do:
> 
> require_gem 'ruby', '> 1.8'
> 
> or something...of course that .gemspec would not actually modify the
> LOAD_PATH as other Gems do, because Ruby's libraries are already in
> the LOAD_PATH.  If you then place a dependency on ruby 1.8 (or 1.8.1,
> etc) you would be guaranteed to have REXML, WEBrick, XMLRPC4R, etc.
> 
> Hm...now that I think of it, that is pretty sweet.  If folks thinks
> this is good, it could be done quite quickly.

Another idea is to have a lightweight gem manifest, downloadable as a
separate entity, that would check for all the files in the gem, and if
you have them all, spring the gem into existence. That way, if you
manually install a package, you can use its manifest to make it look
like you installed it from a gem all along.

martin