gem module and option user_install: yes

Archives Ansible Project
1

Hi,

According to the documentation, gem module accepts an option to install gems in home directory (user_install: yes). It doesn’t seem to work as described, because this module launches “gem” commande without adding --user-install, which means that they are installed in /var/lib/gems. Should the module add this option ?

Currently, the module has the following code:

cmd = [ module.get_bin_path(‘gem’, True) ]
…
if not module.params[‘user_install’]:
cmd.append(‘–no-user-install’)

I can provide a patch to add --user-install in the opposite case if this is the recommended way.

Or am I missing something in how I should configure gem or .gemrc ?

For information, I’m using ruby1.9.1 from Debian Wheezy.

Thanks,
Jocelyn

2

Can you share the line you are using from your ansible playbook as well as the output from running it in --verbose mode ?

Thanks!

3

I’m using this:

  • name: install gems
    gem: user_install=yes name=“{{ item }}” state=present
    sudo: yes
    sudo_user: jocelyn
    with_items:
  • rack

The command output:

TASK: [install gems] **********************************************************
failed: [osm3.openstreetmap.fr] => (item=rack) => {“cmd”: [“/usr/bin/gem”, “install”, “–include-dependencies”, “–no-rdoc”, “–no-ri”, “rack”], “failed”: true, “item”: “rack”, “rc”: 1}
stderr: ERROR: While executing gem … (Errno::EACCES)
Permission denied - /var/lib/gems

stdout: INFO: gem install -y is now default and will be removed
INFO: use --ignore-dependencies to install only the gems you list

msg: ERROR: While executing gem … (Errno::EACCES)
Permission denied - /var/lib/gems

FATAL: all hosts have already failed – aborting

Thanks,
Jocelyn

4

So in Ansible 1.3 the module adds “–no-user-install” when user_install is set to no.

user_install=yes is the default.

Can you please check the version of Ansible you are using and let me know if you see a problem in 1.3?

I seem to recall this feature was added recently but Ansible does yell about invalid arguments so thinking an older version might have had a bug and want to be sure.

Thanks!

5

Le 24/08/2013 00:01, Michael DeHaan a �crit :

So in Ansible 1.3 the module adds "--no-user-install" when user_install
is set to no.

user_install=yes is the default.

Can you please check the version of Ansible you are using and let me
know if you see a problem in 1.3?

I'm using ansible 1.3, and gem 1.8.23. I don't see anything on gem
documentation suggesting that --user-install is the default value, so
I'm surprised that gem module doesn't add this.

I'm suggesting the following patch in fact:

diff --git a/library/packaging/gem b/library/packaging/gem
index 889f510..762bf57 100644
--- a/library/packaging/gem
+++ b/library/packaging/gem
@@ -157,7 +157,9 @@ def install(module):
     else:
         if major and major < 2:
             cmd.append('--include-dependencies')
- if not module.params['user_install']:
+ if module.params['user_install']:
+ cmd.append('--user-install')
+ else:
         cmd.append('--no-user-install')
     cmd.append('--no-rdoc')
     cmd.append('--no-ri')

Thanks,
Jocelyn

6

If you can verify that that command switch (in fact both of them) is there in all gem versions I’m fine with this, and please send me a patch.

Otherwise we may have to determine if that flag is appropriate and send it based on the version of the tool. I’ll yield to experts here.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the default in the CLI changed at some point.

7

Le 24/08/2013 19:01, Michael DeHaan a �crit :

If you can verify that that command switch (in fact both of them) is
there in all gem versions I'm fine with this, and please send me a patch.

Otherwise we may have to determine if that flag is appropriate and send
it based on the version of the tool. I'll yield to experts here.

I wouldn't be surprised if the default in the CLI changed at some point.

According to RubyGem changelog, the command option --user-install was
available at least on version 1.3.0 (2008-09-25). I'm not sure if it was
present earlier.

On version 1.3.7 (2010-05-13), default was changed from --user-install
to --no-user-install:

=== 1.3.7 / 2010-05-13

[...]

New features:

[...]
  * --user-install is no longer the default. If you really liked it, see
    Gem::ConfigFile to learn how to set it by default. (This change was
made
    in 1.3.6)
[...]

I'm sending the patch through a pull request on github.