@dallasmarlow @Primer42 is saying that the collins-shell and collins-notify libraries read the ```VERSION``` file from disk, so removing the ```VERSION``` file will require changes to how those libraries report their versions. 

@Primer42 that suggestion is specific to rubygems. We dont want to force users of these gems to have rubygems installed, rather than another method (i.e. managing ```$:``` manually). For the ```CollinsNotify::Version```, I would say just rip that whole class out, and remove https://github.com/tumblr/collins/blob/master/support/ruby/collins-notify/lib/collins_notify/options.rb#L108. Not super necessary.

For collins_shell, its more integrated, and it looks like he is already using Gem to figure out what the latest gem is for comparison. Unsure what to do there.