[Rubygems-developers] /etc/gemrc and GEM_PATH behaviour

[Eric Hodel]

On Sep 1, 2008, at 02:18 AM, Amanda Waite wrote:
> I've been working on OS level packaging of some Ruby Gems on  
> OpenSolaris. I had hoped to be able to use /etc/gemrc to specify the  
> gem search path, but I've found that setting gempath in /etc/gemrc  
> only affects the running of the gem command and not the running/ 
> loading of gems themselves. I've worked through the code as best I  
> can and it seems to come down to the GemRunner class creating a  
> Gem::ConfigFile instance which then reads the /etc/gemrc file. The  
> gempath and gemhome values are then pushed into the Gem.path via the  
> use_paths method in rubygems.rb. This code path is only used when  
> running the gem command. For running Gems (like rails) or loading  
> gems in scripts, the value for default_path is used unless GEM_PATH  
> is set. In this case the ConfigFile is never loaded.
>
> Is there any documentation that describes the intended behaviour of / 
> etc/gemrc? I've looked around but most of what I've found relates  
> to .gemrc and much of that is anecdotal.

The best way to do this is to write a lib/rubygems/defaults/ 
operating_system.rb that overrides settings from lib/rubygems/ 
defaults.rb and include it with the OpenSolaris package.