After some research, it appears this isn't a bug, but a feature!
as you can see here https://github.com/carlhuda/bundler/pull/2237
a dry_run
flag has been implmented to act as if gems would have been removed and instead of removing them it just prints that
the actual code is here
if Bundler.settings[:dry_run]
Bundler.ui.info "Would have removed #{output}"
else
Bundler.ui.info "Removing #{output}"
FileUtils.rm_rf(gem_dir)
end
as you can see, if dry_run it prints thats. else it removes the gem
so as this is a feature and not a bug, it is not going to be fixed any time soon. This leaves a question for heroku (which I am waiting for a reply) as to why they are using dry_run..
Note for those that aren't aware - This bloats slug
size