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I assume he means: any gems that monkey-patch any of the built-in classes. I believe ActiveSupport modifies things like Fixnum (1.days.from_now, for example).

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Does it really happen at install time or (like in Python) at runtime everytime the package/module/gem is loaded/required?

ActiveSupport doesn't modify the base Ruby classes until it's been loaded. Merely installing gems will not impact anything except disk space.

Yes. That's what I meant.

Ah. Ok. I was thinking something changing core files on disk.

I bet that's doable ...

Change string.c, recompile, if a gem can execute arbitray code.

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