ruby - Should Gemfile.lock be included in .gitignore?

Question

I'm sort of new to bundler and the files it generates. I have a copy of a git repo from GitHub that is being contributed to by many people so I was surprised to find that bundler created a file that didn't exist in the repo and wasn't in the .gitignore list.

Since I have forked it, I know adding it to the repo won't break anything for the main repo, but if I do a pull request, will it cause a problem?

Should Gemfile.lock be included in the repository?

Answer 1

Assuming you're not writing a rubygem, Gemfile.lock should be in your repository. It's used as a snapshot of all your required gems and their dependencies. This way bundler doesn't have to recalculate all the gem dependencies each time you deploy, etc.

From cowboycoded's comment below:

If you are working on a gem, then DO NOT check in your Gemfile.lock. If you are working on a Rails app, then DO check in your Gemfile.lock.

Here's a nice article explaining what the lock file is.