# Gem is an evil?

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [June 19, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277 "2007-06-19T23:36:01Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2007, 11:36pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/1 "2007-06-19T23:36:01Z")

</div>

Hi all,

looks like “gem update” killed my application.  
it was a very simplistic application that i carefully cooked under  
ubuntu  
after the selfprepared recipe:

rails+goldberg+activescaffold+capistrano+mongrel+apache2

not sure if a strange\*) gem rails-1.2.3.6906 was an indirect killer,  
but definitely as for now I am  
motivated to use plugins more, more and more…

Comments to this bloggy post are welcome.

regards,

Valery.

\*) try to google for “rails-1.2.3.6906” i got only TWO pages, both are  
in Polish language

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2007, 11:55pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/2 "2007-06-19T23:55:02Z")

</div>

Valery wrote:

> but definitely as for now I am  
> motivated to use plugins more, more and more…
> 
> Comments to this bloggy post are welcome.
> 
> regards,
> 
> Valery.
> 
> \*) try to google for “rails-1.2.3.6906” i got only TWO pages, both are  
> in Polish language

Freeze your stuff, both Rails and gems. Then you won’t have to rely on  
whatever versions the system has installed.

rake rails:freeze:gems

[http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/gems/](http://svn.techno-weenie.net/projects/plugins/gems/)

–  
Cheers,

- Jacob A.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 12:01am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/3 "2007-06-20T00:01:03Z")

</div>

Thanks for your post, Jacob!

Oh, at least i know the application-wide name of the cure now 🙂

hehe, I am quite happy that i am not the admin, who may fail to know all  
rails apps being developed by developers working in his realm and  
therefore  
fail to freeze all things at once…

## best regards

Valery

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 8:14am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/4 "2007-06-20T08:14:37Z")

</div>

Hi Valery,

I detected recently that an update of rubygems to version 0.93 had  
some problems.  
After installing rubygems it was not possible to update any gem.  
Only solution (I found):  
Download rubygems 0.94 to disk, unpack it in you ruby folder and  
execute the setup.rb

Best luck  
Chris

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 3:12am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/5 "2007-06-20T03:12:17Z")

</div>

On 6/19/07, Valery [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> not sure if a strange\*) gem rails-1.2.3.6906 was an indirect killer,  
> but definitely as for now I am  
> motivated to use plugins more, more and more…

That’s a beta rails version. As for why gem is now pulling from the  
beta rails gem server, I don’t know. Those beta releases don’t go to  
the official rubyforge servers.

–  
Rick O.  
[http://lighthouseapp.com](http://lighthouseapp.com)  
[http://weblog.techno-weenie.net](http://weblog.techno-weenie.net)  
[http://mephistoblog.com](http://mephistoblog.com)

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 9:10am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/6 "2007-06-20T09:10:41Z")

</div>

Hi Chris,

thanks for reply, i don’t have “rubygems” gem, just “rubygems-update”  
of version 0.9.4

## best regards

Valery

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/v/a87d85/32.png) [@Valery](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/Valery)\
**Post date:** [June 20, 2007, 11:54am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-is-an-evil/107277/7 "2007-06-20T11:54:04Z")

</div>

i think the reason is found. No idea why, but there are two  
repositories among the gem sources that caused the  
edge version to be installed:

[http://gems.rubyonrails.com](http://gems.rubyonrails.com)  
[http://gems.rubyonrails.org](http://gems.rubyonrails.org)

i have deleted them, cleared the cache and now things go alright.

## best regards

Valery