http://plugins.ardes.com > gems

= NOTE: Rails edge has the gems tasks now - use them instead!

= gems

Adapted from technoweenies freeze gems plugin.  This version adds two features:

1. gems are unpacked into vendor/gems to make clear what they are

2. it's possible to have multiple versions of gems with architecture dependent features

== Usage
  
==== freeze

  rake gems:freeze GEM=gemname [VERSION=version] [ARCH=detect|archname] [TO=dirname]

Running the above task will unpack the named gem into RAILS_ROOT/vendor/gems/ARCH/

If ARCH is unspecified, and the gem has no extensions, the gem will be unpacked into gems/ruby
If ARCH is unspecified, and the gem has extensions, ARCH will be detected and the gem will
be unpacked into gems/ARCH.  

==== unfreeze

  rake gems:unfreeze GEM=gemname
  
will remove the named gem from all ARCHS

==== loading

The init.rb file loads gems from gems/ARCH and then gems/ruby, automatically.
This means that you can have two different versions of a gem, for different architectures, 
and the correct one will be loaded.
  
== Example

_hpricot_ builds native extensions, while _syntax_ does not.  Here's how this gems:freeze plugin handles that.

On my dev platform (a mac):

  rake gems:freeze GEM=hpricot
  rake gems:freeze GEM=syntax
  
results in the following lqyout:

  vendor/
    gems/
      i686-apple-darwin8.9.1/
        hpricot-0.5/
      ruby/
        syntax-1.0.0/

I can add these to svn, or whatever.  On my deployment platform (Fedora box), the hpricot gem will not be
loaded, because the arch is for the mac.  So i need to add the linux version of hpricot:

So I log into the fedora box, and do:

  rake gems:freeze GEM=hpricot
  
which results in adding:

  vendor/
    gems/
      i386-redhat-linux-gnu/
        hpricot-0.5/  

I can add this to my scm, and the correct version will be loaded on each machine.