Why
Gems have a habit of building native extensions from source. On development machines, this is not a problem. On production machines, it means we require gcc, and gems are painfully slow to install.
What
RPGem will create a binary RPM with the compiled extensions, which you can install on a machine painlessly.
Where
gem install rpgem
How
rpgem [gem_name] [OPTIONS]
Options:
-v VER, --version VER Specify a specific version of the gem to use.
-V VER, --version-req VER Specify a version requirement,
i.e. '< 2.3', or '~> 1'
-d DEP, --depends DEP Specify an rpm (non-gem) dependency.
-R, --recursive Recursively package gem dependencies
-p PFX, --prefix PFX Specify a prefix to use in the rpm.
Defaults to /usr, but could easily be
/usr/local, /opt, etc.
-f, --fetch Only fetch the gem(s)
-s, --make-spec Only fetch the gem(s) and create the specfile
-b, --build Fetch the gems, create the specfile, and build the rpm
(this is the default)
For example
mysql: rpgem mysql -v 2.8.1 -d 'mysql > 5.0' -d mysql-devel
rails, with an /opt prefix (need -R to package rake, actionpack, etc): rpgem rails -v 2.3.2 -R -p /opt
redis: rpgem redis -R -d redis
...you get the idea. See /examples for the specfiles generated by these commands.