Now that we are openly challenging technical status quo around gems, I feel that I can openly share my dream:

[katafrakt@ruby.social]

Now that we are openly challenging technical status quo around gems, I feel that I can openly share my dream:

gem 'foobar', '>~ 1.0', flags: [:activerecord, :rspec, :phlex]

... which would set up integration with other gems, make them dependencies if needed etc.

[katafrakt@ruby.social]

Of course, this does not have to be limited to other gems integration, might be also used to turn off some unneeded features (with their dependencies).

[ahx@ruby.social]

@katafrakt I don’t understand. Does this load the rspec integration of the foobar
gem?

[katafrakt@ruby.social]

@ahx yes. Perhaps RSpec is a bit exotic, but thinking about ActiveRecord, it could:

- set minimal supported AR version as a dependency
- load AR extensions
- even if the project has Sequel in deps, does not load Sequel extensions

[katafrakt@ruby.social]

Main use case I would see:

- selecting HTTP adapter, so you don't end up with 12 different in the project
- choosing markdown renderer
- using nokolexbor instead of nokogiri

[pointlessone@status.pointless.one]

@katafrakt Rubygems should adopt Gentoo Package Manager Specification https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Package_Manager_Specification

At least the names and versions section of it.