Re: Please help fixing gems on OSX

Over the past few months, several people have posted on various mailing
lists, including this one, that their rubygems install on OSX fails
with the following error:

/usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/cmd_manager.rb:52:in
initialize': uninitialized constant Gem::CommandManager::HelpCommand (NameError) from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/cmd_manager.rb:46:innew’
from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/cmd_manager.rb:46:in
instance' from /usr/local/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/gem_runner.rb:25:inrun’
from /usr/local/bin/gem:23

I have discovered the cause of this error, at least on my machine, but
not the final underlying cause.

in $LIBDIR/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems/, there is a file named
gem_commands.rb ; on my machine, this file was empty. However, there
was also gem_commands.1.rb , which contained the original content of
gem_commands.rb . To fix the error, simply move gem_commands.1.rb onto
gem_commands.rb .

Thanks go to LoganCapaldo on IRC for being patient with me and guiding
me through the sub-basement levels of Ruby’s library system.

Dan Uznanski