How to fix: undefined method `specifications' (caused by RubyGems 1.8)

Sometimes, when running a rake task, RubyGems 1.8.5 raises an error:

Copyrake aborted!
undefined method `specifications' for "/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8":String

This has been fixed since May 31 but is still not available as a new RubyGems version.

Either wait for a new version to eventually come out, downgrade to some really old version (1.6.2 works for some) or apply the fix Show archive.org snapshot manually:

• Find your rubygems.rb -- mine was located at /usr/local/lib/site_ruby/1.8/rubygems.rb
• Modify the self.each_load_path method according to the path. Mine now looks like this:
  def self.each_load_path(partials)
  partials.each do |gp|
  base = File.basename gp
  specfn = File.join(dir, "specifications", "#{base}.gemspec")
  if File.exists? specfn
  spec = eval(File.read(specfn))
  spec.require_paths.each do |rp|
  yield File.join(gp,rp)
  end
  else
  filename = File.join(gp, 'lib')
  yield(filename) if File.exists? filename
  end
  end
  end
• Also, I needed to change a second appearance of “gemdir.add(load_path).expand_path” in line 261 to “result << load_path” for it to work (which is probably covered by some other fix commit).

I bet there is a semi-automated way to get a patch from the Github repository that you can apply on your rubygems.rb but I don't care enough to toy around with git format-patch. If you do, let me know.