[Rubygems-developers] Environment variables

[Gavin Sinclair]

On Monday, April 19, 2004, 4:30:39 AM, Jim wrote:

> Gavin Sinclair wrote:
>> I'm concerned about RUBY_GEMS: GEM_PATH would be more intuitive
>> (RUBY_GEMS could mean anything, really).

> I have no problems with the name change.  GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH make a
> good pair.

>> And I'd expect that the
>> *first* element in this path would be the target dir for installs.
>> Not sure why I expect that.  Isn't that behaviour apparent somewhere
>> at the moment?

> Actually, the target directory is most likely the *last* element of the
> GEM_PATH (or RUBY_GEMS, whatever).  This allows the user to override
> anything in the official gem directory.

> GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH/RUBY_GEMS interact like this.  If GEM_HOME is in
> the path, then the path is left as is.  If GEM_HOME is not in the path,
> it is added to the end.

Good point.  I wonder, though: why would the user want to 'override'
the official gem directory *as a source, not a target*?  A gem is a
gem is a gem, is it not?  You don't need to fiddle the order in which
you *search* (locally) for a gem: you can either access it or you
can't.

So what were the original design considerations?

Gavin