[Rubygems-developers] Should binary platform gems be auto-selected before ruby platform on windows?

[Luis Lavena]

On Jan 1, 2008 11:17 PM, Chad Woolley <thewoolleyman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I have some test gems.  There is a dependent gem [1] which depends on
> another dependency gem.  The dependency gem has two platforms, one
> default ruby [2], and one with a platform of 'mswin32' [3].
>
> When I install the dependent gem [1], it selects the ruby platform
> dependency [2] instead of the mswin specific platform dependency [3].
>

Great example Chad, I'll check and debug the Rubygem installer process
tomorrow when return to the office.

> Is this the desired behavior?  I sort of thought that a binary
> platform gem should be preferred over a plain-ruby platform, if it
> exists.  Don't some multi-platform gems sometimes require compilation
> of a 'ruby' platform, but also offer a precompiled binary as well?
>

No, it shouldn't be the desired behavior, since the "platform
automatism" should avoid the raise of issues if there is a gem
properly build for the current platform.

'ruby' [2] gem should be used as fallback if no other gem matching the
platform was found.

> Thanks,
> -- Chad

Thanks for your testing,

>
> [1] http://geminstaller.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/spec/fixture/gems/specifications/dependent-stubgem-depends-on-multiplatform-1.0.0.gemspec
>
> [2] http://geminstaller.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/spec/fixture/gems/specifications/stubgem-multiplatform-1.0.1.gemspec
>
> [3] http://geminstaller.rubyforge.org/svn/trunk/spec/fixture/gems/specifications/stubgem-multiplatform-1.0.1-mswin32.gemspec


-- 
Luis Lavena
Multimedia systems
-
A common mistake that people make when trying to design
something completely foolproof is to underestimate
the ingenuity of complete fools.
Douglas Adams