Gems error concerning yaml

[Michael Litchard]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I'm trying to install rails using gems. It chokes on yaml.
# gem18 install yaml --include-dependencies
INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org/
ERROR: could not find yaml locally or in a repository

advice?
Michael Litchard

 

[jemminger]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I'm trying to install rails using gems. It chokes on yaml.
# gem18 install yaml --include-dependencies
INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
Bulk updating Gem source index for:http://gems.rubyforge.org/
ERROR: could not find yaml locally or in a repository

advice?
Michael Litchard

eh, AFAIK yaml comes with the base ruby install.

 

[Michael Litchard]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

Then why would gems break on a yaml install when I tried to install rails?
The text I posted was my attempt to install yaml directly, in the hopes
of getting useful error messages. Originally, I just did this.

# gem18 install yaml --include-dependencies
INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org/
ERROR: could not find yaml locally or in a repository

It seems to me, if yaml is part of the base install, then gems should not
try to install it. If it isn't, then it should install successfully. Either
way, it seems like
a little problem.

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

I'm trying to install rails using gems. It chokes on yaml.
# gem18 install yaml --include-dependencies
INFO: `gem install -y` is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list
Bulk updating Gem source index for:http://gems.rubyforge.org/
ERROR: could not find yaml locally or in a repository

advice?
Michael Litchard

eh, AFAIK yaml comes with the base ruby install.

 

[David Masover]

Then why would gems break on a yaml install when I tried to install rails?

I don't know. Why would you try to install yaml directly? I don't see it as a
requirement for Rails anymore -- try "gem install rails" and see what
happens.

# gem18 install yaml --include-dependencies ...
ERROR: could not find yaml locally or in a repository

That pretty clearly tells you that "yaml" does not exist as a library, and
that you should look for it elsewhere.

It seems to me, if yaml is part of the base install, then gems should not
try to install it.

There isn't any way, right now, for a gem to be part of the base install.
There isn't even a one-to-one mapping between gems (as in gem install foo)
and libraries (as in require 'foo').

I'm not convinced that's an ideal architecture, but that's how it is.

So are you suggesting that there should be a list of keywords for which
Rubygems will say "I think you mean something that's now part of core"?

 

[Michael Litchard]

[Note: parts of this message were removed to make it a legal post.]

So are you suggesting that there should be a list of keywords for which
Rubygems will say "I think you mean something that's now part of core"?

no no. but when I did a gems install ruby, it choked on one of the
dependencies. It was yaml.
I ended up using netbsd's pkgsrc to install rails. It's working now. But I
don't understand why gems would think I needed to download yaml, and then
choke when it couldn't find it. Other package managers I have used don't do
this. Anyway, I was very excited to see rails working right away with hardly
any effort on my part, now I'm going to get to work on my project
to learn Ruby (building a blog engine).

 

[Eric Hodel]

no no. but when I did a gems install ruby, it choked on one of the
dependencies. It was yaml.

There is no yaml gem, so it couldn't fail to be installed as a
dependency, as no gem lists it as a dependency.

Can you paste the exact text of this failure? Maybe the actual error
message you got can be reworded in order to prevent confusion.

I ended up using netbsd's pkgsrc to install rails. It's working now.
But I
don't understand why gems would think I needed to download yaml, and
then
choke when it couldn't find it. Other package managers I have used
don't do
this.

Since there's no yaml gem, of course RubyGems will "choke" it.

Other package managers "choke" on things that don't exist:

MacPorts:

$ port install nosuchport
Error: Port nosuchport not found

FreeBSD's pkg_add:

$ pkg_add -r nosuchpackage
Error: FTP Unable to get ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.2-release/Latest/nosuchpackage.tbz
: File unavailable (e.g., file not found, no access)
pkg_add: unable to fetch 'ftp://ftp.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-6.2-release/Latest/nosuchpackage.tbz'
by URL

FreeBSD's portupgrade:

$ portupgrade -N nosuchport
** No such installed package or port: nosuchport

RubyGems:

$ gem install nosuchgem
ERROR: could not find gem nosuchgem locally or in a repository

 

[Eric Hodel]

The problem is that rubygems' error messages, frankly put, suck
bowling balls through garden hoses. They're basically the raised
exception without any attempt whatsoever to actually report the
conditions that led to the exception. (This, to me, defeats the
whole point of exception-handling -- exception raised at the point
of detection, exception rescued at the point of knowing what went
wrong, error message produced that explains situation -- but this is
neither here nor there.)

I would like to make RubyGems super awesome, but if the actual output
from which error messages you think "suck bowling balls through a
garden hose" are not posted, they cannot be improved.

There are 148 lines featuring "raise" in RubyGems at present, and 89
featuring "rescue". I can't psychically determine which of these
raises and resuces failed you, so to improve things I'm going to need
your help.

Remember, people volunteer to work on RubyGems. Complaining about the
imperfections of a volunteer, open source effort without offering a
helping hand does not encourage the volunteers that brought it to
where it is today to continue devoting their valuable free time
towards improving it.

What I'm guessing is this: at some point in the gems update (which
always happens no matter how many times it caches the gem metadata
-- read any number of a dozen other threads commenting on this by
now) a YAML file is being processed. And it's failing for some
reason. And this failure gets reported in a confusing fashion that
makes it look like the error is caused by a missing YAML component.

The metadata update problem has been fixed (read rubygems-developers
for details, or the ChangeLog in trunk) with a new metadata updater
that does not perform updates the same way. Read any number of my
responses to those dozen or so threads you're mentioning for the past
2-3 weeks. Release is twoish weeks off pending further bug fixes and
feedback.

As for the error, I can only believe that you're either out of date
with your RubyGems installation, or you're using an additional source
that has an indexer that is out of date. RubyGems no longer uses YAML
as its primary data source. It now uses Marshal exclusively.