CODEWITHSUNDEEP
rubyrubygems
Nathan Long
Nathan Long

Reputation: 125912

What determines where gems are installed?

I'm trying to set up a Sinatra app on my web host. I don't have sudo rights to install gems in the system-wide path, which is several subfolders beneath /usr/local, but I do have a gems folder in my app's directory.

Background

This reference gives the following definitions:

Initial settings on login

When I first ssh into this web host, echo $GEM_HOME and echo $GEM_PATH both produce an empty string, but gem list shows several gems.

Trying to change gem location

From the command line, I have set GEM_HOME like this:

GEM_HOME=$PWD/gems # 'gems' folder under present working directory
echo $GEM_HOME     # correctly outputs the gem folder I specified
ls $GEM_HOME       # shows gems folder contents, namely: 
                   # bin/ cache/ docs/ gems/ specifications/

I also set GEM_PATH to the same folder.

After doing this, gem list still shows global gems rather than the gems in the specified folder, and gem install still tries to install to the global location.

What am I missing?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1641

Answers (3)

Reactormonk
Reactormonk

Reputation: 21700

There is no manpage for gem, which doesn't make it easier. I assume GEM_PATH is where to look for the gems, and GEM_HOME is where to install them. Try

export GEM_HOME = "$GEM_PATH"

Upvotes: 2

Nathan Long
Nathan Long

Reputation: 125912

Use 'export'

Looks like export, as Tass showed, was the missing piece: it makes my local GEM_HOME variable a global one.

Here's what I've done:

export GEM_HOME=$PWD/gems       # where to install and look for gems
export PATH=$PWD/gems/bin:$PATH # append the gems' binaries folder to
                                # the current path, so that I can call
                                # `bundle install` and have it find
                                # myapp/gems/bin/bundle

Upvotes: 2

Eugene
Eugene

Reputation: 4879

You could use Bundler as well. Bundler makes it very easy to manage Gem versions, even when sudo access is not possible. You create a file called Gemfile in the root of your application and put lines such as these:

gem "sinatra"
gem "some_other_gem_dependency"
gem "and_so_on_and_so_forth", ">= 1.0"

And then run bundle install --path /where/you/want/your/gems/stored which will install the gems to a path you have access to. You then put this in your config.ru:

require 'rubygems'
require 'bundler'

Bundler.require
require './your_app'
run YourApp

Check out http://gembundler.com/sinatra.html for more info.

Upvotes: 1

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