How can I force gem to upgrade to gem 1.3.1

Question

I am trying to install a gem like this:

C:\InstantRails\rails_apps\foodmarksthespot>ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/lazyatom/engines.git

Which returns this message:

Rails requires RubyGems >= 1.3.1 (you have 1.2.0). Please `gem update --system` and try again.

But when I try to update using:

gem update --system

it says:

Updating RubyGems
Nothing to update

This is on windows. How can I force it to upgrade the system to a specific version?

Answer 1

For anyone stumbling upon this question recently: In order to install a specific older version of RubyGems (probably to maintain a legacy application, as I did) I had to do the following, as the previous answers didn't work:

$ gem install -v 1.3.7 rubygems-update && \    
$ ruby `gem env gemdir`/gems/rubygems-update-1.3.7/setup.rb    

$ gem -v 
1.3.7

As documented here: http://www.chentianwen.net/wordpress/2011/05/24/how-to-update-rubygems-to-a-specific-version/

Answer 2

If you want to install a specific version then try like the following.

$gem install -v=version_number package_name

For example in your case it should be,

$gem install -v=1.3.1 RubyGems

Answer 3

http://rubyforge.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=28071

From there:

NOTE: RubyGems 1.1 and 1.2 have problems upgrading when there is no
rubygems-update installed. You will need to follow the second set of update
instructions if you see "Nothing to update".

If you have an older version of RubyGems installed, then you can still
do it in two steps:

$ gem install rubygems-update (again, might need to be admin/root)
$ update_rubygems (... here too)

Answer 4

What do you get if you run gem --version in cmd? It sounds like the gem executable you are running in cmd is not the same one Rails is using.