[Rubygems-developers] [BUG?] RubyGems $LOAD_PATH Alteration

[Jim Weirich]

Austin Ziegler said:
> Guys,
>
> I just noticed that $LOAD_PATH does an unshift of discovered
> directories. I'm not sure this is a good thing. It seems to me that it
> should be appended or even spliced so that RubyGems results are
> *after* site_ruby but before stdlib.

I disagree, but am will to hear different opinions.

The current design allows site_ruby first crack at supplying a required
file.  If the file is there, great!, the fill is used from site-ruby.

If the file is not there, then rubygems kicks in and activates a gem
containing the missing file at the front of the search list.  Putting it
*after* site_ruby would allow old or partial installations in site-ruby
(which are already known to be inadequate because the file was missing
after all) to hide portions of a newly activated gem.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich     jim at weirichhouse.org    http://onestepback.org
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"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)