Why does it install all versions of a gem when you type apt-get install libsomething-ruby?
This is because RubyGems supports parallel version installs. For example, RubyGems allows having both Rails 2.1.2 and 2.2.2 installed at the same time. Applications and libraries can depend on a specific version of a gem. Dpkg does not have a direct equivalent of this feature. So as a compromise, and in order to ensure that everything works out-of-the-box, we install latest versions of the minor versions. That is, if the “something” gem has versions 1.0.0, 1.0.1 and 1.2.0, then DebGem provides packages for versions 1.0.1 and 1.2.0 but not 1.0.0. It is possible to only install a specific version of a gem.
