Comment 8 for bug 706603

> it's not a simple problem to solve

I disagree. The current state is this: Installation instructions recommend installing RubyGems from source because Ubuntu's is broken. This rubygems installed from source in combination with a Ruby installed from apt will cause gem to write executables in /usr/bin.

What again is the argument against setting EXECUTABLE_DIRECTORY to /usr/local/bin? It's more standard conforming than the current /var path. It's simply the administrator (sudo) installing an executable in /usr/local/bin, which is standard practice.

Ubuntu doesn't modify other software to prevent writing to /usr/local/bin, why pick out rubygems, whose users are developers, not technology averse end users?