Ivan Kolmychek's blog

I’ve decided to try Rails. Finaly. =)

So, while I’m discovering Rails, I’ve got amazed by rvm.

Rvm

• It’s written on bash. I’ve not seen such huge bash script since winetricks.
• There is second version planned, written on ruby, and it already has been funded.
• It’s quite agile and easy to use.
• It supports per-project ruby version and gemsets, in it’s own way (.rvmrc) or in more portable way, with .ruby-version and .ruby-gemset.

Actualy, I’ve got interested because of per-project settings. I’m already using Jekyll for this blog and I don’t want to get any gem conflicts while trying rails, so, I’ve created two separate gemsets - one for jekyll, and one for testing rails. I like the .ruby-version approach more, so, I use it.

~/src/rails-blog-test $ rvm use 2.1
~/src/rails-blog-test $ rvm gemset create rails-test
~/src/rails-blog-test $ rvm --ruby-version use 2.1@rails-test
~/src/rails-blog-test $ bundle install
...
~/src/rails-blog-test $ cd ../ivan-kolmychek.github.io/
~/src/ivan-kolmychek.github.io $ rvm gemset create jekyll
~/src/ivan-kolmychek.github.io $ rvm --ruby-version use 2.1@jekyll
~/src/ivan-kolmychek.github.io $ gem install jekyll
...

And, after that, whenever I cd into any of that folders…

~ $ rvm gemset name
/home/<username>/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.1
~ $ cd ~/src/rails-blog-test
~/src/rails-blog-test $ rvm gemset name
rails-test
~/src/rails-blog-test $ cd ../ivan-kolmychek.github.io/
~/src/ivan-kolmychek.github.io $ rvm gemset name
jekyll

I’ve got separated gem lists for each of that projects. That’s just awesome. =)

Also, you can commit .ruby-version and .ruby-gemset files into your favorite DVCS and use rvm in team and even while deploying your app to production servers.

Side note

In ArchLinux, rvm complains about --user-install in /etc/gemrc. I’ve just disabled it.

Note: do not comment whole line out, just remove option.

Before:

gem: --user-install

After:

gem: