[Rubygems-developers] gems 0.9.0 on ruby 1.8.2 +ubuntu 6.10: now way to install to $HOME

[Alexander Mikhailian]

On Mon, 06 Nov 2006 14:39:23 +0000, Jim Weirich wrote:

> Excellent.  If you would like to write down all the steps you had to do to
> get this to work, I'll make sure the FAQ is updated with this so it will
> be easier on the next person.

Sure! 

Q: How do I install gems in my home directory?

A: You have to redefine the location of the GEM_HOME variable and add the
paths to the gem repositories in the RUBYLIB variable before launching the
installation into a custom directory.

GEM_HOME should point to $PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/1.8 if it used with the 1.8
version of ruby.

RUBYLIB should point to the $PREFIX/lib/ruby and $PREFIX/lib/site_ruby/1.8

Here is a shell script that runs in the rubygems
distribution directory to install into /home/user :

  PREFIX=/home/user
  export GEM_HOME=$PREFIX/lib/ruby/gems/1.8 
  export RUBYLIB=$PREFIX/lib/ruby:PREFIX/lib/site_ruby/1.8
  ruby setup.rb all --prefix=$PREFIX

You may add GEM_HOME and RUBYLIB into your ~/.profile file to
automatically load on login.