Comments on: Bundler: As Simple as What You Did Before

By: Phil Thompson

Phil Thompson — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 21:10:37 +0000

I’ve used Bundler on a number of projects and I think it really streamlines the gem install and upgrade process. I’ve had a few minor issues but usually to do with the gems themselves not being packaged properly.

Well done. I personally think you guys have done a great job on this.

By: tribalvibes

tribalvibes — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 11:36:35 +0000

Well now that I’ve committed and then reinstalled the gem from a git repo it’s installed it under vendor/bundle/…/bundler/gems. But now when I launch the app, Rails says that required gems are missing although they are installed in the system gemenv. Whoa. Am I missing something here? I only want to bundle/freeze SOME of the gems–the ones we have to patch to get to work, and have all of the others pulled normally from the system gemenv. Is Bundler just not designed to do this? I wish I had known several hours ago.

By: tribalvibes

tribalvibes — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:13:54 +0000

ps. I did try gem ‘soap4r’, ’1.5.8.2′, path: ‘gemdir/soapr4r-1.5.8.2′ in the Gemfile and this resulted in:

Using soap4r (1.5.8.2) from source at ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.1-p378/gems/soap4r-1.5.8.2 ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:374:in `gets’: Is a directory – ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.1-p378/gems/soap4r-1.5.8.2/bin/.svn (Errno::EISDIR)
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:374:in `block in shebang’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:374:in `open’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:374:in `shebang’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:399:in `app_script_text’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:328:in `block in generate_bin_script’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:327:in `open’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:327:in `generate_bin_script’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:304:in `block in generate_bin’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:297:in `each’
from ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.1-p378/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems/installer.rb:297:in `generate_bin’
from ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.1-p378/gems/bundler-1.0.2/lib/bundler/source.rb:380:in `generate_bin’
from ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.1-p378/gems/bundler-1.0.2/lib/bundler/source.rb:397:in `install’
from ~/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.1-p378/gems/bundler-1.0.2/lib/bundler/installer.rb:55:in `block in run’

By: tribalvibes

tribalvibes — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 09:11:01 +0000

Seems like a clean way to do this, but I’m having trouble with this use case: an existing project where we’ve frozen the rails gems and applied patches manually that did not get rolled into 2.3.8 (little things like missing constants from const_get, json date parsing etc.) Further there is a soap4r gem installed which has patches in place in its gemdir and there is no actual source for this (it was probably checked out from git and patched.) What’s the easiest way to get bundler to cram all of these into vendor/bundle so I can get on with ‘getting things done’ and not messing with deploying patched gems? Check in the soap4r gem back to a git source I suppose? Is there any way to tell bundler to just source the gem (copy it) from the local filesystem?

Also where/how does bundler keep its list of gems installed in vendor/bundle? Because when I just copied the files (and the specifications, cached files etc.) from gemdir to vendor/bundle it didn’t automatically pick up those additions from the filesystem.

By: kris

kris — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 06:21:35 +0000

Bundler has been hit and miss with me. An issue I ran into today with a project is it kept insisting I needed to install acts-as-taggable-on. It was in the Gemfile, it was already installed, but it insisted it was missing. Pure frustration ensued.

By: jgeiger

jgeiger — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 23:25:36 +0000

I had my issues with bundler in the beginning and have been using it from 0.8x. It was painful to use and I was quite frustrated. I will say right now that they’ve done a wonderful job with it, and if you’re not using it, you really need to be. There are still a few bugs that need to be worked out (gems with :git repos specified in test groupings, I’m looking at you…) but overall it’s a good experience.

By: George Anderson

George Anderson — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:51:54 +0000

@Yehuda, are you using RVM’s custom gemsets? It seems this post is intimating that Bundler obviates that need: just install your gems to system (or RVM’s @global) and let Bundler sort them out.

With custom gemsets I find I’m often running ‘bundle install’. Perhaps I’m doing it wrong(tm)?

By: Bruno Barros

Bruno Barros — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:48:40 +0000

I feel good to work with the bundle, see how simple it is to treat all project dependencies.

By: Levi Rosol

Levi Rosol — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:39:38 +0000

We recently started using Bundler, and for us, the tough part was getting everything setup. I spent the better part of 2 nights digging into dependency issues and version conflicts before finally getting back to stable.

Now that we’re back to a good state, I expect keeping environments in sync should be a non issue.

By: Joe Fiorini

Joe Fiorini — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 12:22:26 +0000

To those doubting the usefulness of Bundler, try building an app to be spun up on demand via cloud virtual machines. Without Bundler, it’s very difficult to get the right version of every dependency, and even when you do you would need to create a new base image every time you upgrade a gem. Bundler also helps development on any size team; when I add a new gem I no longer need to tell everyone what to install (and help some install it), I just tell everyone to run bundle install.

Regardless of _everyone_ grokking it, Bundler is a necessary step for Ruby’s evolution if it’s going to continue being useful. Thanks for all the hard work Yehuda!