[DRE-maint] Bug#448639: can we revisit the location of individual gem binaries?

[Thomas Morgan]

I am disappointed that rubygems 1.1.1 has moved gem binaries back  
into /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/.

I find it somewhat annoying to have to deal with various gems'  
binaries being tucked away in a location that's not in the path. I've  
read the entire history to this particular bug report and understand  
the general concerns, I think.

I can easily agree with the concern over 1.0.1 putting gems in /usr/ 
bin/. But instead of burying them in /var/lib/gems/1.8/bin/ again, can  
we move them to /usr/local/bin/ ? That really is where sysadmins  
expect locally installed stuff to end up and I would suggest that  
manually installing individual gems falls within that expectation.

If there really is strong resistance to moving them to /usr/local/ 
bin/, then perhaps rubygems could be patched to read a config file in / 
etc somewhere that would describe where such binaries should end up? I  
would at least like to be able to easily override them to go into /usr/ 
local/bin with a single, one-time config option.

Thanks for your renewed consideration.

--t