The proposed solution (an environment variable) is crap. That any of the Debian maintainers think that it's a good idea is an indication of how badly broken the Debian process is, and I know that Lucas was trying to do a good thing there. I don't blame him, it's at least an attempt at a fix.
There's already a working solution provided by Apple for Mac OS X and improved upon by the RubyGems team. There's concepts of vendor gems, system gems, user gems, and I think one other level. The Debian team has never considered it despite being told that it's there. The Debian team has also never offered patches that would help RubyGems come more in line with what Debian thinks it should be doing.
Why should the RubyGems guys bother working with uncooperative Debian maintainers?
There's already a working solution provided by Apple for Mac OS X and improved upon by the RubyGems team. There's concepts of vendor gems, system gems, user gems, and I think one other level. The Debian team has never considered it despite being told that it's there. The Debian team has also never offered patches that would help RubyGems come more in line with what Debian thinks it should be doing.
Why should the RubyGems guys bother working with uncooperative Debian maintainers?