Ruby

Ruby is a dynamic, interpreted, open source programming language with a focus on simplicity and productivity.

Installing Ruby

The version of Ruby you need to install depends on your requirements, as not all 3rd party code is compatible with all versions. Here is a summary of the versions below and how to get them:

Ruby 1.9.3 (Stable)

Summary: Ruby 1.9 is recommended usage for new projects.

Pros:

• Vastly improved performance over 1.8
• New features for concurrency such as fibers.
• Various other language improvements, such as an improved CSV parser.

Cons:

• Not compatible with many older gems (and Ruby On Rails versions prior to 2.3)
• Changes in the language might cause older Ruby code not to run, or exhibit unexpected bugs.

Note: Visit http://isitruby19.com/ to determine if the gems/modules you require are compatible with Ruby 1.9.

To install Ruby 1.9, simply install ruby.

Ruby 1.9 also includes RubyGems (detailed below), so you can easily update to the latest RubyGems using:

# gem update --system

Ruby 1.8.7 (Deprecated)

Summary: Use Ruby 1.8.7 with any incompatible or out of date code as necessary.

Last stable version of 1.8, which is incompatible with 1.9. However, there is still code that is based on it.

You can install ruby-1.8.7-svn^AUR or ruby1.8^AUR from the AUR.

RubyGems is not included with the ruby1.8^AUR package, so install rubygems1.8^AUR from the AUR.

Multiple versions

If you want to run multiple versions on the same system (e.g. 1.9.3 and 1.8.7), the easiest way is to use RVM or rbenv.

RubyGems

gem is the package manager of sorts for Ruby modules (called Gems), somewhat comparable to what pacman is to Arch Linux. The gem command will be installed if you followed the installation instructions above.

Running as normal user

When running gem as a user, the gems will be installed into ~/.gem and not affect anyone else, although it might be worth noting that not all gems are happy with being installed in this way, and might insist on being installed by root (especially if they have native extensions). This is considered the best way to manage gems on Arch.

To use gems which install binaries, you need to add ~/.gem/ruby/1.9.3/bin to your $PATH.

This per-user behavior is enabled via /etc/gemrc and can be overridden by a ~/.gemrc file.

Running as root

When running as root, the gems will be installed into /root/.gems and will not be installed to /usr/lib/ruby/gems/.

Note: See bug #33327 for more information.

Bundler solves these problems to some extent by packaging gems into your application. See the section below on using bundler.

Updating RubyGems

$ gem update

Installing a gem

This example installs the MySQL ruby gem:

$ gem install mysql

The process can be sped up somewhat if you do not need local documentation:

$ gem install mysql --no-rdoc --no-ri

The gem will now be downloaded, compiled if necessary, and installed.

Bundler

Bundler installs gems (including those with native extensions) directly into your application, which works very well for shared hosting and easy deployment of Ruby on Rails applications for example. Bundler also resolves dependencies as a whole, rather than individually like RubyGems, making things a lot easier. To install:

$ gem install bundler

Bundler seems to want to install gems system-wide, contrary to the current default behaviour of gem itself on Arch. To correct this, add the following line to your ~/.bashrc:

export GEM_HOME=$(gem env | grep 'INSTALLATION DIRECTORY' | sed 's/.*INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: \(.*\)/\1/')

The above determines which directory gem installs gems into, then tells bundler to install gems into the same directory. The above will resolve to something like this:

export GEM_HOME=~/.gem/ruby/1.9.3

To start a new bundle:

$ bundle init

Then add your required gems into "Gemfile" in the current directory (created by bundle init):

Gemfile

gem "rails", "3.2.9"
gem "mysql"

Finally, run the following to install your gems:

$ bundle install

Or, alternatively, in order to install locally to .bundle under the working directory:

$ bundle install --path .bundle

Managing RubyGems using pacman

Instead of using the gem command directly you can use pacman to manage the installed gems like normal packages. There are a lot of ruby packages available from AUR. Ruby packages follow the naming convention ruby-[gemname]. As an alternative you can use the tool pacgem^AUR which automatically creates arch packages from gems and installs them afterwards using pacman.

Warning: Many ruby gem packages in the AUR explicitly use the --no-user-install or --user-install command line switches, bypassing the global setting found in /etc/gemrc or the users own ~/.gemrc. You're editing the PKGBUILD file before you install, right?

See also

• Ruby On Rails

References

• Ruby - http://ruby-lang.org/
• Rubyforge - http://rubyforge.org
• Bundler - http://github.com/carlhuda/bundler