Comment 4 for bug 302990

The problem with --system is that the package updates itself. This breaks the debian package [1]. If you then uninstalled or upgraded using the packaging system, unknown things would happen because it wouldn't know anything about what rubygems had done to itself. See also the current version of debian's policy on rubygems [2], which is in the process of having some revamping [3] done at the moment with the help of the ruby community.

You really should uninstall the debian package and install from source if you really want to use 'gem update --system'. Personally, I've built from the debian experimental source and maintain the package in a local repository.

The last time I spoke to the MOTU team on IRC a month ago about trying to get some ruby packages into Ubuntu, they expressed that they were heavily understaffed and with jaunty coming up didn't to maintain new packages. I'm getting the packages into Debian instead and we'll pick them up on the next sync I suppose. I did have an offer to pull them from NEW before jaunty ships but I'm doubtful that it will happen.

With that in mind and since we're past FeatureFreeze for Jaunty [4], it's pretty likely we won't get a new version of gems in 9.04. I agree this is hugely disappointing. Canonical/Ubuntu's promise of a regular release schedule is useless to us server folks who aren't getting any love. Build your own packages and maintain a local repository if you want to use Ubuntu as a server platform in the interim.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/libgems-ruby/+bug/206596
[2] http://pkg-ruby-extras.alioth.debian.org/rubygems.html
[3] http://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/pkg-ruby-extras-maintainers/2009-February/003382.html
[4] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JauntyReleaseSchedule