Its Me wrote: > I just downloaded Foxtails (the FXRuby extensions), and upon running the > install scripts I was surprised to see that a bunch of the ruby files that > came with it had been copied over into my ruby/lib/site_ruby/1.8 directory. The installer in foxtails is the standard one, used by many packages: http://raa.ruby-lang.org/list.rhtml?name=setup You can install to another directory by doing $ ruby install.rb config --prefix=/my/home/dir $ ruby install.rb setup $ ruby install.rb install It's also possible to control the lib dir directly. See 'ruby install.rb --help' for details on the --site-ruby option. Then you may need to manually change your RUBYLIB env var. > Is there a reason why installing libraries needs to make changes to the > directory in which ruby itself is installed? I would have expected the > installation to instead make additions to the path in $: instead. The site_ruby dir is, as I understand it, the place where non-standard libraries are supposed to go. What I do locally on my development machine is a bit different, because I don't like edit..install..edit..install. I have a lib dir in my home. This dir is listed on my RUBYLIB, and I symlink from it to my various project directories. This way, require finds my development code before looking in the ruby/lib areas, but I don't have to add each project individually to RUBYLIB. > How does 'require', $:, and installation of new libraries work? (Hyperlink > welcome; I did not find what I needed in pickaxe). What about "Ruby and Its World" in the pickaxe, does that help? Btw, hope you like foxtails...