Interviewer: "How do you manage dependencies?"

Question

In Rails, what does the question in the title mean?

I know that when you install various gems they sometimes have dependencies on other gems. So before deploying the app, I would assume you would need to freeze Rails into the vendor directory and also unpack the gems and their dependent gems into the vendor/gems directory.

Is this the right answer to this question or am I missing some vital issue about dependencies that this question is hinting at?

Answer 1

Things to look at (in no particular order):

geminstaller gem (alternative to the standard rails gem tasks)

rake gems:install rake gems:unpack rake gems:unpack:dependencies

git submodules

svn externals