[Rubygems-developers] Overhaul of specification.rb

[Jim Weirich]

Chad Fowler wrote:
> Looks like this introduced a major bug, probably having to do with the 
> way default values for optional dependencies are generated/handled:
> 
> chadfowler$ sudo ruby -I lib bin/gem install rake
> Attempting local installation of 'rake'
> Local gem file not found: rake.gem
> Attempting remote installation of 'rake'
> ERROR:  While executing gem ... (NoMethodError)
>     undefined method `each' for nil:NilClass

Running with the --backtrace flag shows that the error happens when 
trying to apply "each" to the dependencies.  The new spec code sets up 
dependencies to be initialized to the default value of [].

However, Rake has no dependencies in the gem file.  When the rake spec 
is read by YAML, do we do anything to insure that dependencies != nil 
after loading by YAML.

That's where I would start looking.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich    jim at weirichhouse.org     http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)