[🐛 Bug]: [rb] Either declare or remove dependency on `base64`

[Earlopain]

What happened?

Ruby 3.3 shows a warning if the base64 gem is required without it being declared in the gemspec, Ruby 3.4 will throw an error.
See https://github.com/ruby/ruby/blob/master/doc/NEWS/NEWS-3.3.0.md#stdlib-updates

Many gems have opted to inline the base64 implementation, however this gem makes use of the urlsafe variants which are a bit more complex and not just a wrapper over pack/unpack. You would need to inline the entirety of https://github.com/ruby/base64/blob/9669a7d3b0e3b9a739969404daf58f912c58c6b3/lib/base64.rb, similar to newrelic/newrelic-ruby-agent#2378

How can we reproduce the issue?

Use `selenium-webdriver` on Ruby 3.3

Relevant log output

base64 is not part of the default gems since Ruby 3.4.0. Add it to your Gemfile.

Operating System

Irrelevant

Selenium version

Ruby master

What are the browser(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Irrelevant

What are the browser driver(s) and version(s) where you see this issue?

Irrelevant

Are you using Selenium Grid?

No response

[github-actions]

@Earlopain, thank you for creating this issue. We will troubleshoot it as soon as we can.

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Thank you!

[titusfortner]

@Earlopain would you like to PR the change?

[Earlopain]

Sure, I can do that. In which direction would you like this to go though? Add base64 to the gemspec or inline it instead?

I've already played with inlining it in a fork of mine here trunk...Earlopain:selenium:rb-base64-dep and that seems to work fine. But I'm not sure about the license thing I did there.

[titusfortner]

I don't have strong opinions either way, so whatever you think is best.

Sounds like...

Gemspec

• it's maintained by ruby org, so unlikely to stop being maintained
• we need all of the code

Inline

• minimize dependencies
• unlikely to change

My general inclination is that I'd rather manage a dependency than maintain code unrelated to my repo, but other people balance that calculus differently, and this is not a hill I would die on. 😁

[Earlopain]

As a consumer, I would prefer a minimal dependency tree. However I'm also not the one having to maintain it in the end.

I have already removed base64 from a bunch of gems already so my opinion on this is heavily biased. Most times, there were only one or two usages of the trivial wrapper methods.

I will defer to your decision on this. I don't think my opinion as a random passerby holds much weight.