Warn when Gem::Specification.load fails?

[danielsdeleo]

In our test environment for ChefDK packages, we intermittently see errors like:

/opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/specification.rb:762:in `block in _resort!': undefined method `name' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError)
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/specification.rb:761:in `sort!'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/specification.rb:761:in `_resort!'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/specification.rb:713:in `_all'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/specification.rb:896:in `each'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/dependency.rb:300:in `find_all'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/dependency.rb:300:in `to_specs'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/dependency.rb:324:in `to_spec'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/core_ext/kernel_gem.rb:58:in `gem'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems.rb:595:in `load_yaml'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/config_file.rb:328:in `load_file'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems/config_file.rb:197:in `initialize'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems.rb:291:in `new'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/lib/ruby/site_ruby/2.1.0/rubygems.rb:291:in `configuration'
    from /opt/chefdk/embedded/apps/chef/lib/chef/provider/package/rubygems.rb:48:in `<class:GemEnvironment>'

This error is triggered when we call Gem.configuration at load time in our code. I am unable to consistently reproduce this error, so I am not able to say currently what causes it. However, I noticed there are several cases where Gem::Specification.load can return nil, which seems to be part of the problem. I understand the behavior cannot be changed, but if possible I would like this case to issue a warning, which would assist me in debugging the above issue.

I am currently attempting to reproduce the issue using a patched rubygems with the following warnings added:

danielsdeleo@039890d

Is this something that would be acceptable? Or is there valid usage of Gem::Specification.load that should return nil ?

[copiousfreetime]

@danielsdeleo were you ever able to reproduce this bug?

It looks like the current versions of rubygems do warn if Gem::Specification.load is ever going to return nil. So I'm closing for now unless this can be reproduced.