# Rubygems troubles

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-troubles/142393>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [July 7, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-troubles/142393 "2008-07-07T15:26:11Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![gnufied](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/ea666f/32.png) [@gnufied](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/gnufied)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2008, 3:26pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-troubles/142393/1 "2008-07-07T15:26:11Z")

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Scenario#1:  
In my rails app, i use several awesome gems. Gem X depends on 0.4  
version of rubyforge, while Gem Y, depends on 1.0 version of rubyforge  
gem. They all come with that value hardcoded in gemspecs. Now, this  
creates loads of troubles. I have managed to fix this somehow till now  
fortunately, because in my case, if gem X had hardcoded version of  
rubyforge, gem Y didn’t had hardcoded dependency.

How to solve this?

Scenario#2:  
Locking your program to a particular gem version is a good idea, but  
its such a bad idea for distributable libraries.

Scenario#3:  
Totally mysterious error messages, heck i run command buildr and get:

/usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:142:in `activate': can't activate rubyforge (~> 0.4, runtime), already activated rubyforge-1.0.0 (Gem::Exception) from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:158:in `activate’  
from /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in `each' from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in `activate’  
from /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:49:in `gem’

–  
Let them talk of their oriental summer climes of everlasting  
conservatories; give me the privilege of making my own summer with my  
own coals.

[http://gnufied.org](http://gnufied.org)

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![gnufied](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/g/ea666f/32.png) [@gnufied](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/gnufied)\
**Post date:** [July 7, 2008, 11:34pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/rubygems-troubles/142393/2 "2008-07-07T23:34:39Z")

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> Scenario#3:  
> Totally mysterious error messages, heck i run command buildr and get:
> 
> /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:142:in `activate': can't activate rubyforge (~> 0.4, runtime), already activated rubyforge-1.0.0 (Gem::Exception) from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:158:in`activate’  
> from /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in `each' from /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:157:in`activate’  
> from /usr/local/lib/site\_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb:49:in `gem’

impossible to ‘deactivate’ gems currently, AFAIK–you could, however,  
‘hard require’ the files of another gem, by hand, to ‘overwrite’ the  
already loaded one.  
-R