Gemfile.lock questions

[Ken Dreyer]

I have two more Ruby newbie questions :)

I see a lot of Gems contain a "Gemfile.lock" file. From looking at the
conventions in Fedora's packages, it's a good idea to not include the
Gemfile.lock in RPMs. I'm trying to understand how Gemfile.lock
relates to packaging.

General question: Is Gemfile.lock only intended to be a convenience
for Ruby Gem developers? I thought Gemfile.lock was only for
development, but it seems like its contents can also affect an
application's runtime...?

Packaging question: In preparation for packaging up Gitorious, I've
found that I need to delete some entries from Gemfile.lock in order to
use alternate Gem versions. Is it always safe to override the version
numbers in Gemfile.lock like this?

- Ken