How to write a Gemspec, when the gem's main class name is different?

Question

I have a Gemfile as part of rails app, which I am converting to a gem.

gem "jruby-openssl", "0.7.4"
gem "nokogiri"
gem 'xml-simple', :require => 'xmlsimple'
gem "httpclient"

How do I write, the .gemspec file, for the gem I create from this? The gemspec I wrote looks like this.

Gem::Specification.new do |s|
   s.name = "my_gem"
   s.platform    = Gem::Platform::RUBY
   s.authors     = [""]
   s.email       = [""]
   s.homepage    = ""
   s.summary     = %q{MyGem}
   s.description = %q{MyGem}
   s.files = Dir["{app,lib,config,public,db}/**/*"] + ["Rakefile", "Gemfile"]

   s.require_paths = ["lib"]
   s.add_dependency 'nokogiri', '>= 1.5.0'
   s.add_dependency('xml-simple') 
   s.add_dependency 'httpclient'
end

However, the xmlsimple object is not called, because, the add dependency cannot take the same parameters as a regular gem call. How do I write the gemspec to call xmlsimple like its done in the Gemfile ?

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 19 '12 at 20:10

You can do:

s.add_dependency 'xml-simple'

Like you have already. However when requiring the library inside your application (perhaps inside lib/yourgem.rb) you do:

require 'xmlsimple'

Instead of:

require 'xml-simple'

I found a gem that is using xml-simple which may be useful for your reference. https://github.com/stjohncj/RESTRack

How to write a Gemspec, when the gem's main class name is different?

1 Answers1