How to handle Gem repository failures?

Rails
1

Well, I’ve managed to screw myself but good, apparently.

I cleanup my “old” versions of actionmailer and actionpack, and now the
rails gem is unavailable and of course, I can’t start rails 1.1.2
without the latest actionpack and actionmailer.

None of the rails related gems appears to be currently available in the
repository for me to get the old versions back so that I can run rails
1.1.2.

So, I have a few questions:

  1. If I execute a gem command and see:

C:\eclipse\workspace>gem install actionpack 1.12.1
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find actionpack (> 0) in the repository

am I totally screwed with respect to being able to get that gem? Or is
there a way for me to download it another way and install it by hand?

  1. Is there a place where the status of the Gem repository is shown so
    that we know if there’s some kind of outage or maintenance that’s being
    done?

Serves me right for trying to update stuff ASAP.

Wes

2

So, I have a few questions:

  1. If I execute a gem command and see:

C:\eclipse\workspace>gem install actionpack 1.12.1
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find actionpack (> 0) in the repository

Hm, I’m seeing this too, although only on Windows. I was able to fix it
by deleting the source_cache file, which on my machine is in:

c:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\source_cache

Then I did a “gem install ikko” and all was well.

Yours,

Tom

3

What does gem install ikko do?

4

Tom C. wrote:

So, I have a few questions:

  1. If I execute a gem command and see:

C:\eclipse\workspace>gem install actionpack 1.12.1
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find actionpack (> 0) in the repository

Hm, I’m seeing this too, although only on Windows. I was able to fix it
by deleting the source_cache file, which on my machine is in:

c:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\source_cache

Then I did a “gem install ikko” and all was well.

Yours,

Tom

What is the purpose of deleting the source_cache file? Is there any
documentation about this anywhere so that I can learn about it?

Thanks,
Wes

5

Tom C. wrote:

So, I have a few questions:

  1. If I execute a gem command and see:

C:\eclipse\workspace>gem install actionpack 1.12.1
ERROR: While executing gem … (Gem::GemNotFoundException)
Could not find actionpack (> 0) in the repository

Hm, I’m seeing this too, although only on Windows. I was able to fix it
by deleting the source_cache file, which on my machine is in:

c:\ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\source_cache

Then I did a “gem install ikko” and all was well.

Yours,

Tom

I’m making progress after deleting the source_cache file.

I’d like to point out that the error message is “Could not find
actionpack (> 0) in the repository,” not “Could not find X in your
LOCAL COPY of the repository index” which frankly makes a big
difference. If I knew about the source_cache file, I would have deleted
it.

Kind of confusing for the people moving to Ruby and Rails.

Wes

6

Thanks for the tip. I was having the problem on Debian Sarge. I
deleted the source_cache at
/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
and all is well.

-bakki

7

What does gem install ikko do?

Ah, sorry, I just meant that as an example. I mean, then go ahead and
do a “gem install abc”, where abc == the gem name.

Yours,

Tom

8

I’m making progress after deleting the source_cache file.

Super!

I’d like to point out that the error message is “Could not find
actionpack (> 0) in the repository,” not “Could not find X in your
LOCAL COPY of the repository index” which frankly makes a big
difference. If I knew about the source_cache file, I would
have deleted
it.

Kind of confusing for the people moving to Ruby and Rails.

Yup, good point, might be worth it post a note to that effect here:

http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?atid=575&group_id=126&func=browse

I’m sure they’d appreciate feedback on the error messages; every bit
helps…

Yours,

Tom

9

What is the purpose of deleting the source_cache file?

I thnk that’s the local gem cache.

Is there any
documentation about this anywhere so that I can learn about it?

Yup, you can read all about RubyGems here:

http://rubygems.org/

and there’s a rubygems-developers mailing list:

http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubygems-developers

Yours,

Tom