The *crown* program gathers gem lib and bin files under one directory for fast loading and predictable behavior. For example:

  [~/tmp] crown -v mygems json nokogiri sinatra
  sinatra-0.9.4
  nokogiri-1.3.3
  json-1.1.7
  rack-1.0.0
  PATH=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/bin
  RUBYLIB=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext/json/ext:
  /home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/lib

The gems are copied under mygems:

  [~/tmp] ls mygems
  bin  ext  lib
  [~/tmp] ls mygems/lib
  action-nokogiri.rb  json.rb   nokogiri.rb  rack.rb  sinatra.rb
  json                nokogiri  rack         sinatra  xsd

The output of 'crown -v' shows you which gems (and versions) it is gathering, including all dependencies, and it shows you the PATH and RUBYLIB you need to use those files:

  [~/tmp] export RUBYOPT=''
  [~/tmp] export RUBYLIB=/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/ext/json/ext:/home/vjoel/tmp/mygems/lib
  [~/tmp] ruby -r json -e 'p JSON'
  JSON

Why?

* You can stop requiring 'rubygems' and you don't need RUBYOPT='rubygems'. There are no runtime dependencies on rubygems.

* Lookups for required files should be faster.

* No chance that "gem update" or "gem cleanup" might break your program.

* You can distribute the "crown of gems" with your program.

Features:

* Either symlink files (-s switch) or copy files (the default).

* Include other non-gem files using dest:file syntax.

* Existing files in the target dir are not touched if they are not in the way.

* Works correctly even with gems that have strange require_path lists, like json.

* No dirs are ever deleted or replaced.

* A file is written only if either it doesn't already exist in the target dir or you specify the force (-f) switch.

* The verify (-V) mode checks whether the target dir looks like it has had the crown command run on it with the given arguments.

* Dry-run (-n) and verbose (-v, -vv) options, as in FileUtils

See the help (-h) for details, license, version, and contact information.

This software is not fully tested on all gems; please test carefully before using in production environments.