Odd behavior involving rubygems - ruby

My gem uses rubyinline for some ruby-evil style stuff (I don't like it but it's the only way to do what I want) and uses rubyinline to do it.
So I've added it to my .gemspec with:
spec.add_runtime_dependency "RubyInline"
but when I try to test the gem, ruby keeps reporting:
'require': cannot load such file -- inline (LoadError)
But when I add to the test's Gemfile:
gem 'RubyInline'
It suddenly starts working (well, ok, it errors but for an entirely unrelated reason).
I can see that the correct version of rubyinline is installed as well, so I know it's not that.
whats going on? Why won't it accept that rubyinline is there unless I add it to the gemfile?

Related

When is the 'require' necessary when using a ruby gem?

I noticed for some gems you must include it in the file where you want to use it like this require 'a_gem', but this is not always the case.
I am going to compose a gem by myself. What should I do if I do not want to add the require 'my_gem' to the .rb file when using it?
Usually, an application that is using a gem needs to require the gem:
require "my_awesome_gem"
MyAwesomeGem.do_something_great
However, if an application is using bundler, which defines the application's gem in a file called "Gemfile":
source 'http://rubygems.org'
gem 'my_awesome_gem'
then the application may invoke bundler in a way that automatically requires all of the gems specified in the Gemfile:
require "bundler"
Bundler.require
MyAwesomeGem.do_something_great
Rails projects use Bundler.require, so a Rails application will not need to explicitly require a gem in order to use it: Just add the gem to the Gemfile and go.
For more about Bundler.require, see the bundler documentation
For more about how Rails uses Bundler, see How Does Rails Handle Gems? by Justin Weiss.
This doesn't make sense. If you want to write a Gem and use it, it needs to be required somewhere.
This "somewhere" could be explicit in one of your scripts, it could be written in a Gemfile or it could be required by another script/gem that is required by your script.
If you write a gem, Ruby will not include it automatically in all your scripts.
Finally, if you publish it, should every single Ruby script on earth magically require it and execute your code?
I suppose that the project you have seen which didn't use require 'a_gem' was using a Gemfile.

JRuby require fails when I change case, but Ruby doesn't?

I'm using the RMagick gem. If you require 'RMagick', it will give you an error, saying to use require 'rmagick', lowercase, instead. If I follow its advice, Ruby and Rubinius work fine, but JRuby throws a no such file to load -- rmagick exception.
It looks like Ruby has changed whether it wants lowercase gem names, but JRuby hasn't? What's the problem here and what would the proper solution be?
you're probably using two different require "paths" (gems) ... since RMagick is C-ext based it works under MRI+Rubinius. under JRuby if you'd had the very same RMagick gem trying to load it would sure fail. take a look at what gets actually loaded under JRuby.

Nokogiri Ruby 'require' Issues

I'm new to Ruby and I'm having a lot of trouble trying to use Nokogiri. I've been trying to find a resolution for hours now, so any help is appreciated. I tried searching for and using solutions from other related SO posts before caving and posting my own. When I run ruby -v I get: ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30 patchlevel 352) [x86_64-linux]
(Edit: I have updated ruby with updates-alternatives --config ruby and selected /usr/bin/ruby1.9.1 but when I do ruby -v it is now showing version 1.9.3 WTF am I doing wrong here?)
I have a new project directory at ~/workspace/ruby/rubycrawler/ and I used Bundler to install nokogiri, which installed correctly:
Using mini_portile (0.5.2)
Using nokogiri (1.6.1)
Using bundler (1.5.1)
Your bundle is complete!
Running bundle show nokogiri returns /var/lib/gems/1.9.1/gems/nokogiri-1.6.1.
In the directory I'm running the script from I have a simple html file named "index.html". The script I'm trying to run is even simpler (or so I thought):
require 'nokogiri'
page = Nokogiri::HTML(open("index.html"))
puts page.class # Nokogiri::HTML::Document
The error is rubycrawler.rb:1:in 'require': no such file to load -- nokogiri (LoadError).
I also added require 'rubygems' even though I read it isn't needed for 1.9+ and still no luck.
A lot of searching shows "Did you put this gem in your Gemfile?". So I generate a Gemfile and add gem 'nokogiri'. I try running the small script again and get the same error. I read "Try deleting Gemfile.lock." so I did but still couldn't get it to work. I then read to try testing it out in irb so I tested "open-uri" and "nokogiri" and here's what I got:
irb(main):001:0> require 'open-uri'
=> true
irb(main):003:0> require 'nokogiri'
LoadError: no such file to load -- nokogiri
I'm really having a lot of trouble figuring this out, so really any help at all is really appreciated.
Ruby tools like RVM, Bundler, etc., to the novice, appear to do a lot of magic, but really, there is no magic to them. The key here lies in what Bundler actually does for you. It manages a manifest of dependencies, BUT at runtime, those dependencies STILL have to get loaded somehow, and my gut feeling is that is what is not happening here.
Regardless of what version of Ruby you are using, if you are using Bundler, there's an easy way to do this. Precede the command that starts your program with "bundle exec" and that will make Bundler edit Ruby's load path so that it includes all the things in the manifest (Gemfile.lock).
For example:
$ bundle exec ruby foo.rb
A additional note for anyone using RVM: RVM generally will modify the shebangs in the scripts that launch programs like "ruby" or "rake" so that they use the "ruby_no_exec" shell (or similar) instead of the plain old "ruby" shell. That alternate shell is Bundler-aware and makes it generally unnecessary to type "bundle exec," but since the OP is using system Ruby, that's not applicable and commands should be manually prefixed with "bundle exec".
Hope this helps!
In addition to Kent's answer, I would recommend switching to RVM instead of using the system installed ruby. System rubies tend to be horribly out of date, especially when it comes to important things like features and security updates. It might not help you in your current situation, but it would be well worth the time. If you are unfamiliar: http://rvm.io

ruby gem statement - what does it do?

I think I have a basic understanding of what require/include statements at the top of a ruby script are doing, like
require 'rspec'
These statements are easy to google and find relevant results. But sometimes I have seen a gem statement like
gem 'rspec'
What does this line do?
In ruby code, gem(gem_name, *requirements) defined in Kernel tells Ruby to load a specific version of gem_name. That's useful when you have installed more than one version of the same gem.
For example, if you have installed two versions of rspec, say 2.12.0 and 2.13.0, you can call gem before require to use specific version. Note that gem should come before the require call.
gem 'rspec', '=2.12.0'
require 'rspec'
A gem 'gem_name' without version uses the latest version on your machine, and that's unnecessary. You can call require without gem to get the same behavior.
And besides, in Bundler::Dsl, gem is used to tell bundler to prepare/install specific version of ruby gems. You'll see that in Gemfile
The original behaviour of require, before Rubygems, was to search all the directories listed in the $LOAD_FILES variable for the file, and to load the first one it finds that matches. If no matching file was found, require would raise a LoadError.
Rubygems changes this process. With Rubygems, require will search the existing $LOAD_PATH as before, but if there is no matching file found then Rubygems will search the installed gems on your machine for a match. If a gem is found that contains a matching file, that gem is activated, and then the $LOAD_PATH search is repeated. The main effect of activating a gem is that the gems lib directory is added to your load path. In this way the second search of the load path will find the file being required.
Normally this will mean that the latest version of a gem that you have installed gets activated. Sometimes you will want to use a different version of a gem, and to do that you can use the gem method. The gem method activates a gem, and you can specify the version you want, but doesn’t require any files. When you later require the files you want, you’ll get them from the gem version you specified.
In Ruby, gems are packages with functionality that can be used out of the box (as libraries in other Programming languages).
The gems that you use with your Ruby Project can easily be managed with a tool called "bundler", just google it. The snippet of code you posted is part of the spec file that bundler uses to install and update all the libraries that you specify for your project.
If you are developing a Ruby on Rails, using gems an managing them with bundler is very common and so to say best practice.
Gems are just great because there are so many useful libraries that extend default functionality, eg of rails, and that you can use out of the box!
For a list of gems, visit rubygems.org

How to install, require, and use a gem in ruby

I'm trying to use rake in my ruby script...(Ruby 1.8.6, JRuby 1.6.5)
Downloaded rake using gem install --remote rake, looks ok on install...
Fetching: rake-0.9.2.2.gem (100%)
Successfully installed rake-0.9.2.2
1 gem installed
I've got a simple ruby script which works fine, but when I import rake to using any of the following requires, it starts complaining....
require 'rake'
LoadError: no such file to load -- rake
or
require '/lib/rake'
LoadError: no such file to load -- lib/rake
After some searching, I found that adding require 'rubygems' just before rakefixes the issue....
require 'rubygems'
require 'rake'
Even though it's working, I've got some questions...
The gem spec on rake shows the require_path as lib, so why
doesn't require '/lib/rake' work? Am I misunderstanding the significance of require_path?
Why is it necessary to place require 'rubygems' before require
'rake'
Yes, you are misunderstanding the significance. The require_paths in the specification is an array of subdirectories of that gem's installation directory that should be searched for files belonging to the gem.
To find out where rake really is, try this:
$ gem which rake
You'll see that it is actually installed somewhere completely unrelated to /lib; on my system, it's under /var/lib/gems. Ruby gems, in general, live in their own directory structure; the only file in the standard Ruby include path ($:) is rubygems itself, which you used to have to explicitly require in order to make any actual gems visible. (Since Ruby 1.9, that has not been necessary.)
Gems are more complex than just libraries to load; you can have multiple versions of the same gem installed, and specify which one you want at a time, and do other things that wouldn't work if the gems were just dumped into the standard Ruby include path.
The require_path in the gemspec tells ruby where the files of this gem are located within the gem. It makes you able to type require 'rake', and ruby then knows it needs to look for /lib/rake within the gem installation folder.
In Ruby 1.8, rubygems (the mechanism responsible for making gems available to your app) is not loaded by default, and the default ruby isn't aware of any gem on your system. You need to load rubygems before being able to require any other gem. This is not the case anymore with Ruby 1.9.

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