# Crown 1.0.0 **URL:** \ **Category:** Ruby\ **Created:** [August 20, 2009, 5:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052 "2009-08-20T05:22:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:22am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/1 "2009-08-20T05:22:07Z")
Quoting the README at [GitHub - vjoel/crown: Gather gem lib and bin files under one directory for fast loading and predictable behavior.](http://github.com/vjoel/crown/tree/master) : The _crown_ program gathers gem lib and bin files under one directory for fast loading and predictable behavior. For example: [~/tmp] crown -v mygems json nokogiri sinatra sinatra-0.9.4 nokogiri-1.3.3 json-1.1.7 rack-1.0.0 PATH=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/bin RUBYLIB=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext/json/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/lib The gems are copied under mygems: [~/tmp] ls mygems bin ext lib [~/tmp] ls mygems/lib action-nokogiri.rb json.rb nokogiri.rb rack.rb sinatra.rb json nokogiri rack sinatra xsd The output of ‘crown -v’ shows you which gems (and versions) it is gathering, including all dependencies, and it shows you the PATH and RUBYLIB you need to use those files: [~/tmp] export RUBYOPT=‘’ [~/tmp] export RUBYLIB=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext/json/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/lib [~/tmp] ruby -r json -e ‘p JSON’ JSON Why? - You can stop requiring ‘rubygems’ and you don’t need RUBYOPT=‘rubygems’. There are no runtime dependencies on rubygems. - Lookups for required files should be faster. - No chance that “gem update” or “gem cleanup” might break your program. - You can distribute the “crown of gems” with your program. Features: - Either symlink files (-s switch) or copy files (the default). - Include other non-gem files using dest:file syntax. - Existing files in the target dir are not touched if they are not in the way. - Works correctly even with gems that have strange require\_path lists, like json. - No dirs are ever deleted or replaced. - A file is written only if either it doesn’t already exist in the target dir or you specify the force (-f) switch. - The verify (-V) mode checks whether the target dir looks like it has had the crown command run on it with the given arguments. - Dry-run (-n) and verbose (-v, -vv) options, as in FileUtils See the help (-h) for details, license, version, and contact information. This software is not fully tested on all gems; please test carefully before using in production environments. ---
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 5:51am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/2 "2009-08-20T05:51:23Z")
On Aug 19, 2009, at 20:21 , Joel VanderWerf wrote: > PATH=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/bin > RUBYLIB=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext/json/ > ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/lib > > The gems are copied under mygems: > > [~/tmp] ls mygems > bin ext lib > [~/tmp] ls mygems/lib > action-nokogiri.rb json.rb nokogiri.rb rack.rb sinatra.rb > json nokogiri rack sinatra xsd that’s pretty cool! you might consider making this a gem plugin and or merging it into rubygems straight up. I think the latter has serious merit. ---
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 10:17am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/3 "2009-08-20T10:17:07Z")
Ryan D. wrote: > that’s pretty cool! > > you might consider making this a gem plugin and or merging it into > rubygems straight up. I think the latter has serious merit. I guess the downside is, you can’t have multiple versions of the same gem available at once? I guess if each application or project has its own tree of symlinks or copies of the gems, that’s fine. ---
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 11:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/4 "2009-08-20T11:21:30Z")
On Aug 20, 2009, at 01:17 , Brian C. wrote: > copies of the gems, that’s fine. > That’s exactly the point of crown as I see it. ---
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/5 "2009-08-20T19:13:56Z")
Ryan D. wrote: > that’s pretty cool! > > you might consider making this a gem plugin and or merging it into > rubygems straight up. I think the latter has serious merit. Thanks! I will look into gem plugins… ---
**Author:** ![Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Joel\_VanderWerf](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Joel_VanderWerf)\ **Post date:** [August 20, 2009, 7:13pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/crown-1-0-0/174052/6 "2009-08-20T19:13:21Z")
Ryan D. wrote: > On Aug 20, 2009, at 01:17 , Brian C. wrote: > > > I guess the downside is, you can’t have multiple versions of the same > > gem available at once? > > > > I guess if each application or project has its own tree of symlinks or > > copies of the gems, that’s fine. > > That’s exactly the point of crown as I see it. Right. It would be a problem if, for example, your project contains two executables which depend on different gem versions. Crown barfs if you include two versions of the same gem.[1] Currently, I’m using this to give production and development trees their own gem environments that don’t change when gem update happens. At well defined intervals, we can re-crown development to pull in the latest gems. When it’s time to migrate dev to pro, we just pull the crown along with it. This would also be possible by specifying gem versions explicitly in the source, but that seems harder to automate. Also, by not using rubygems’ require we can be sure that there are no unmanaged dependencies. [1] $ crown cr narray=0.5.9.7 narray=0.5.9.6 Replication target for /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/narray-0.5.9.6/./src/ChangeLog exists and is different: cr/./src/ChangeLog