set GEM_HOME on the environment to avoid inconsistencies

Task Info (Flyspray)
Opened By Felipe Contreras (felipec)
Task ID 68757
Type Feature Request
Project Arch Linux
Category Packages: Extra
Version None
OS All
Opened 2020-11-27 02:38:12 UTC
Status Assigned
Assignee Anatol Pomozov (anatolik)

Details

The instructions in the wiki to allow user installations of gems mention the --user-install option, but this is ignored by the bundler program.

First, the instructions say to do this to disable building the documentation:

  ~/.gemrc:
  gem: --no-document

But this would override the system's /etc/gemrc, which has --user-install, so the user actually has to do:

  ~/.gemrc:
  gem: --user-install --no-document

Then the instructions proceed to explain --user-install, and that the gems end up in ~/.gems/ruby.

Then the instructions for bundler are mentioned, and the following command is suggested:

  bundle config path ~/.gem

However, that's not the same path gem uses (~/.gem/ruby).

The actual path can be found running the command ruby -e 'puts Gem.user_dir' (e.g. ~/.gem/ruby/2.7.0).

So the instructions are wrong.

I and others have contacted the ruby/bundler developers multiple times over the years, and they have refused to fix the issues:

There is a very simple solution to get around all these problems, just distribute a script for profile.d:

  /etc/profile.d/ruby.sh
  export GEM_HOME="$(ruby -e 'puts Gem.user_dir')"

This way no --user-install is needed: /etc/gemrc can be dropped, and all the instructions for ~/.gemrc and the bundle path config (which is wrong), since bundle uses $GEM_HOME by default.

Additionally, we can modify the PATH so the user doesn't have to:

  export PATH="$PATH:$GEM_HOME/bin"

So the instructions about the setup can be removed.

So this fixes everything:

  /etc/profile.d/ruby.sh
  export GEM_HOME="$(ruby -e 'puts Gem.user_dir')"
  export PATH="$PATH:$GEM_HOME/bin"
Edited by Andreas Schleifer