# Different flavors of a gem for different versions of Ruby

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/different-flavors-of-a-gem-for-different-versions-of-ruby/152323>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 2, 2008, 6:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/different-flavors-of-a-gem-for-different-versions-of-ruby/152323 "2008-11-02T06:40:55Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sevensoft)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2008, 6:40am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/different-flavors-of-a-gem-for-different-versions-of-ruby/152323/1 "2008-11-02T06:40:55Z")

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I’m updating my SqlStatement gem [http://sqlstatement.rubyforge.org/](http://sqlstatement.rubyforge.org/) to  
be  
compatible with Ruby 1.9, and owing to totally different ways of doing  
s-  
expressions in Ruby 1.8 (which required RubyNode) and 1.9 (which can  
trap  
the not and != operators as methods, so I can use the interpreter itself  
to generate everything I need in an s-expression), the Ruby 1.9 version  
no longer requires a dependency on RubyNode. In fact, RubyNode doesn’t  
exist for 1.9 AFAICT.

Is there a way to do one of the following in RubyGems?

- create a Ruby 1.8 flavor of the gem and another Ruby 1.9 flavor.  
Preferably, I’d like the gems to have the same name and live side-by  
side on RubyForge.  
or
- Have both versions of the dependencies exist in a single gem,  
but only enforce the RubyNode dependency when the gem is installed on  
Ruby 1.8.

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**Author:** ![sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sevensoft)\
**Post date:** [November 2, 2008, 1:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/different-flavors-of-a-gem-for-different-versions-of-ruby/152323/2 "2008-11-02T13:39:05Z")

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Take a look at how the mongrel gem is doing it. It uses a bunch of  
conditionals to distinguish actions to perform for jruby and mri. adding  
in Ruby 1.9 support is (fairly) easy.

I forked mongrel the other day so I could take out the fasterthread  
dependency (not needed for 1.8.6+); might be useful:

> **[GitHub - dvdplm/mongrel: Mongrel on git](https://github.com/dvdplm/mongrel/tree/master)**
>
> master

(and I’m sure it can be done more elegantly!)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/s/f9ae1b/32.png) [@sevensoft](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/sevensoft)\
**Post date:** [November 4, 2008, 2:55am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/different-flavors-of-a-gem-for-different-versions-of-ruby/152323/3 "2008-11-04T02:55:08Z")

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On Sun, 02 Nov 2008 07:37:17 -0500, David P. wrote:

> On Sun, 2 Nov 2008 14:38:53 +0900, Ken B. wrote:
> 
> > Preferably, I’d like the gems to have the same name and live side-by  
> > side on RubyForge.  
> > or
> > 
> > - Have both versions of the dependencies exist in a single gem,  
> > but only enforce the RubyNode dependency when the gem is installed  
> > on Ruby 1.8.

AFAICT from the metadata of the generated gems, this doesn’t do what I  
want. It generates different gems on different versions of ruby, but  
there’s no indication that these gems are different in the end. By the  
way, I think you have a bug: if you generate the gem on Ruby 1.8.6, it  
will be installable on Ruby 1.8.4 but won’t include the fastthread  
dependency.

–Ken