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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-16T11:40:40+00:00

This is not the first time I’ve run into this, but here’s a concrete

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This is not the first time I’ve run into this, but here’s a concrete example:

$ bundle update rails
Fetching source index for http://rubygems.org/
Bundler could not find compatible versions for gem "builder":
  In Gemfile:
    rails (~> 3.0.0) ruby depends on
      builder (~> 2.1.2) ruby

    hoptoad_notifier (>= 0) ruby depends on
      builder (3.0.0)

So Bundler claims the hoptoad_notifier gem depends on the 3.0.0 version of builder. But that’s not the case, it only requires builder >= 0.

$ gem dependency hoptoad_notifier
Gem hoptoad_notifier-2.4.11
  actionpack (>= 0, development)
  activerecord (>= 0, development)
  activesupport (>= 0, runtime)
  bourne (>= 0, development)
  builder (>= 0, runtime)
  nokogiri (>= 0, development)
  shoulda (>= 0, development)

Why does Bundler think hoptoad_notifier depends on builder 3.0.0?

Selected bits from the Gemfile and Gemfile.lock:

source "http://rubygems.org"

gem 'rails', '~> 3.0.0'
gem 'hoptoad_notifier'
...a bunch of testing gems, custom gems, etc.

Gemfile.lock

GEM
  remote: http://rubygems.org/
  specs:
    actionmailer (2.3.14)
      actionpack (= 2.3.14)
...
    builder (3.0.0)
...
    cucumber (1.2.0)
      builder (>= 2.1.2)
      diff-lcs (>= 1.1.3)
      gherkin (~> 2.10.0)
      json (>= 1.4.6)
...
    hoptoad_notifier (2.4.11)
      activesupport
      builder
... no other mentions of builder
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I consider this more of a workaround than an answer to the question, so I’ll leave the question open for a while to see if there’s a better answer.

    I found different ways to attack the problem (using bundle update on specific gems, modifying the Gemfile, running bundle install), but continued to run into some form of this error for various dependencies. It really seems like an issue with Bundler. (I’m using v1.0.22, upgrading made it worse.) Ultimately, what got me out of this mess was to delete the Gemfile.lock and run bundle install, letting Bundler resolve all the dependencies from scratch. Now of course, this is far from ideal, since the whole reason you have a lock file is to lock down your app’s dependencies. But since I’m upgrading Rails to v3 anyway, it was acceptable in this case.

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