Gem Dependency Problem

Bundler cannot resolve a chain of local dependencies.

Setup

Let's say you have 3 gems, a-gem, b-gem, and c-gem, such that a-gem depends on b-gem and b-gem depends on c-gem. You are developing all these gems locally, simultaneously, and they all live as siblings in a folder.

a-gem.gemspec lists b-gem as a dependency, and a-gem's Gemfile specifies the local path where b-gem can be found. b-gem as a similar pattern for c-gem.

Problem

bundle install fails for a-gem, because it can't find c-gem, which is a dependency of b-gem. This is because bundle install reads the Gemfile for a-gem, but only the .gemspec of b-gem (since it is a dependency), so it has no information for where to locate c-gem.

Solution?

The only solution I've found is to specify c-gem's location in a-gem's Gemfile. But this seems sad -- a-gem doesn't directly care about c-gem and shouldn't need to know anything about it.

Is there a better way?