CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubybundlerexecutable
Some Guy
Some Guy

Reputation: 13568

Creating Ruby gems with same name executables?

I want to have a Ruby Gem that will have the same executable as another Gem.

When called with command args it will either do something, or pass the command on to the other Gem.

The first problem I have is that it isn't able to run two same named executables. I get this error:

Bundler is using a binstub that was created for a different gem. This is deprecated, in future versions you may need to bundle binstub yourgem to work around a system/bundle conflict.

How can I have Gems with the same named executables and ensure that the target one executes?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 316

Answers (1)

Zach Dennis
Zach Dennis

Reputation: 1784

You cannot rely on Bundler or Rubygems to manage this for you. All it does it copy an executable that you specified in your gem spec to its bin/ directory.

The first problem you'll have is that the executable that runs may be dependent on the order in which the gems were installed which you can't guarantee.

Another problem that you'll have is that you cannot execute code on gem installation so you will be unable to run code that would try to automate this set up for people who install your gem.

I believe your gem should provide a non-conflicting executable. You can then supply post install instructions in your gem spec that are displayed to a user installing the gem, in the README, in a blog post, etc. you can tell the user that they need to set up an alias that points to your executable. In all shells that I'm aware of aliases will be executed before filesystem executables.

For the times when people want to bypass your alias and execute the original executable you can tell people to escape the command, e.g. \original-gem. That bypasses alias and function lookup in most shells and will allow users to have your super awesome version as the default (thru the alias) and a way to easily access the original.

Upvotes: 1

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