[DRE-maint] Bug#529713: rubygems1.8: Can't build gems that don't have homepages

[Ken Bloom]

Package: rubygems1.8
Version: 1.3.2-1
Severity: normal


Subject: rubygems1.8: Can't build gems that don't have homepages
Package: rubygems1.8
Version: 1.3.2-1
Severity: normal

Rubygems refuses to build my gem:

$ gem build wordnet.gemspec 
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (NoMethodError)
    undefined method `empty?' for nil:NilClass

$ cat wordnet.gemspec 
Gem::Specification.new do |s|
  s.name="WordNet"
  s.author="Ken Bloom"
  s.email="kbloom at gmail.com"
  s.version="1.0.1"
  s.summary="A binding to the WordNet C library"
  s.require_path="ext"
  
  #disabled because it spews lots of errors
  #but the generated rdoc isn't useful in the least
  s.has_rdoc=false 

  s.files += Dir["ext/*"]
  s.extensions << "ext/extconf.rb"
end

Some tracing indicates that this is a bug at
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/rubygems/specification.rb:886, which doens't check
to see whether the homepage field is null before calling .empty? on
it.

    unless homepage.empty? or homepage =~ /\A[a-z][a-z\d+.-]*:/i then
      raise Gem::InvalidSpecificationException,
            "\"#{homepage}\" is not a URI"
    end


Based on
http://blade.nagaokaut.ac.jp/cgi-bin/scat.rb/ruby/ruby-talk/337030, it
appears that this bug is fixed in rubygems 1.3.3.

(Adding an s.homepage="" to the gemspec works as a workaround, but
that shouldn't be required of projects that don't have a homepage.)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages rubygems1.8 depends on:
ii  rdoc1.8                     1.8.7.72-3.1 Generate documentation from Ruby s
ii  ruby1.8                     1.8.7.72-3.1 Interpreter of object-oriented scr

rubygems1.8 recommends no packages.

Versions of packages rubygems1.8 suggests:
ii  build-essential             11.4         Informational list of build-essent
ii  ruby1.8-dev                 1.8.7.72-3.1 Header files for compiling extensi
pn  rubygems-doc                <none>       (no description available)

-- no debconf information

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages rubygems1.8 depends on:
ii  rdoc1.8                     1.8.7.72-3.1 Generate documentation from Ruby s
ii  ruby1.8                     1.8.7.72-3.1 Interpreter of object-oriented scr

rubygems1.8 recommends no packages.

Versions of packages rubygems1.8 suggests:
ii  build-essential             11.4         Informational list of build-essent
ii  ruby1.8-dev                 1.8.7.72-3.1 Header files for compiling extensi
pn  rubygems-doc                <none>       (no description available)

-- no debconf information