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.