One issue I've run into (which may simply be ignorance) is the time consuming 'bundle install'. For example, I've updated some gems and run 'bundle update' on my development machine. I push that to the CI server, which must run 'bundle install' to install any new gems. But this seems to trigger the (NP-complete, last I checked [1]) dependency resolver yet again, even though I've already run it locally and my Gemfile.lock is newer than my Gemfile. Is there a way to skip it? Perhaps bundle just-blindly-install-the-gems-listed-in-Gemfile.lock?

Bundler in general is a nice tool, and Bundler + shared pile of gems is a nicer workflow than gemsets (though I am not a fan of "remembered options"; I'd rather make my own config file than forget that Bundler "remembered" my experimenting).

The more I think about Bundler, the more I wish that general purpose tools like Nix Package Manager [2] got more love. I've been playing around with using Bundler for the dependency resolution step, then Nix for the packaging and deployment steps (each app might have a separate Nix profile where it could install its particular set of gem versions), but there are missing pieces.

[1] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3soqhbnh0jY#t=35m22s [2] http://nixos.org/nix/