MySQL gem

Rails
1

I am upgrading from Rails 1.2.6 to Rails 2.1.0 on a system that I have
inherited. The database is MySQL. The servers do not have mysql gem
installed yet seem to work OK. I have always installed MySQL gem (v
2.7) even on my development machines. My questions are:

  1. Should I install this gem as a part of the upgrade?
  2. Is there anything that I need to look out for when I install this
    gem on the servers that have been working fine without it? I don’t do
    anything special on my machines, just install it since it is supposed to
    use better and speedier drivers.
  3. Am I missing something here? This application was done by some
    people who were supposed to know that they were doing. In other words,
    fairly knowledgable and experienced in Ruby on Rails. I am just amazed
    that this gem is missing yet no one has noticed anything yet. I do not
    want to lead with my chin up.

Thanks in advance for your advice.

Bharat

2

There’s two ways to install it–the gem way or just install it by hand
[i.e. download the source, run ruby extconf.rb, then make, or something along those lines–it installs it right into ruby’s lib folder, not into the gems folder].
You can tell if it’s installed this way by doing
irb
then
require ‘mysql’
if it works it probably is.

On Sep 5, 11:03 am, Bharat R. [email protected]

3

Thanks Roger.
Actually my first question is: should I install it even though the
application does seem to be running fine without it?

4

Bharat R. wrote:

Thanks Roger.
Actually my first question is: should I install it even though the
application does seem to be running fine without it?

I’d say don’t fix what ain’t broke. If speed becomes an issue then look
into it (to make sure that you’re not using the pure ruby version, which
is slow), but until then just let it work :slight_smile:
-=R