"gem require"
6 Dec, 2010
One thing that irks me about Rubygems is that it provides no cheap way to ensure that a gem is installed. For instance, in a script, I want to check that I've got "heroku" installed, before calling it. My options include:
- just assume it's installed, and fail if the assumption is bad;
- call "
gem install", knowing that it will needlessly re-install the gem if it's already installed; - try calling "
heroku", and fall back to "gem install" if it fails.
I'm not happy with any of those options, so a wrote a simple gem command plugin to make it easier. Install it like so:
$ gem install gem_require
Successfully installed gem_require-0.0.3
1 gem installed
Now you can use "gem require" in place of "gem install". It's similar, except that it short-circuits if you already have the required gem installed:
$ gem require heroku
heroku (1.11.0) is already installed
If you want to ensure that you're on the bleeding edge, use the "--latest" option:
$ gem require --latest heroku
Installing heroku (1.14.6) ...
Installed heroku-1.14.6
Of course, if you already have the latest version, there's no need to re-install it:
$ gem require --latest heroku
heroku (1.14.6) is already installed
I hope that helps somebody else.
Feedback