[DRE-maint] Bug#691737: rubygems: Please make default install location the user's home directory for non-root users

[Reuben Thomas]

Package: rubygems
Version: 1.8.24-1ubuntu1
Severity: wishlist

The support for Debian ruby packages to be available as gems is much
appreciated, but currently users have to use --user-install to install
gems in their home directory, and uninstalling doesn't work (see bug
#595168).

Please could "gem install" when run by non-root users install in the
user's home directory? I'm no expert on how this is best achieved, but
there seem to be at least three sensible options:

1. Change the order of gem paths so that the home directory comes
first. This also seems sensible because surely the user's own gems
should override system-installed gems.

2. Change the default arguments of "gem install" to include
"--user-install".

3. Change the default installation directory (as reported by "gem
env") to the user's home directory.

I'm sorry, I couldn't find any official Debian ruby policy to consult
before filing this bug; I also searched the debian-ruby archives, but
found only a six-year-old discussion that appears to pre-date the
integration of rubygems into Debian.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers quantal-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'quantal-updates'), (500, 'quantal-security'), (500, 'quantal')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages rubygems depends on:
ii  ca-certificates  20120623
ii  ruby1.8          1.8.7.358-4ubuntu0.1

Versions of packages rubygems recommends:
ii  build-essential  11.5ubuntu3
ii  ruby1.8-dev      1.8.7.358-4ubuntu0.1

rubygems suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information