[Rubygems-developers] Specifying a remote source

[Gavin Sinclair]

Hi all,

Something we've occasionally talked about is incorporating arbitrary
remote sources into the overall operation of 'gem'.  Well, now it's
come up on ruby-talk:103355, from Joel VanderWerf:

> Is it possible to set up one's own gem repository and select it from
> the gem command line? I'm looking for ways of distributing software
> that is of no real interest to the ruby community, but is needed by
> a few people where I work.

If Rich didn't have a lock on the repository, I'd probably implement
something, but it's probably best to scope it out anyway.  Also, with
the pending rearrangement of commands, it's probably easier and/or
more flexible.

Here are some thoughts.

In the following command, http://joel:8808 becomes one available
source for whatever command is performed.  'blah' will be installed,
but from any available source, not necessarily the one specified.

  gem --source http://joel:8808 install blah

In the following command, '--source http://joel:8808 ' is a specific
argument to the 'install' command, so it is the *only* source used.

  gem install blah --source http://joel:8808

Likewise, to list the gems available in that particular place:

  gem list --source http://joel:8808

And to list gems available at the usual places *plus* Joel's machine:

  gem --source http://joel:8808 list

Finally, you can specify additional sources in the config file:

  sources:
    - http://joel:8808
    - http://sam:8808

With that config file, all gem commands are implicitly

  gem --source http://joel:8808 --source http://sam:8808 ...

Does that sound reasonable?

If the above functionality were implemented, the next logical step
would be

  gem install-all --source http://joel:8808

which would be a great feature.  I'm sure Rich would agree, as he has
to maintain a consistent Ruby setup among hundreds of machines.

Cheers,
Gavin