Is it possibile to have something like a 'local' gem repository for Ruby?
I'm working on a custom Linux distribution without admin rights. Ruby is installed on the machine (v.1.8.7) but apparently no 'gem' or 'bundle' or whatever are installed. I need to use some Ruby gems like Nokogiri.
Is it possible to use Ruby gems without installing them through gem install?
Yes. Any gem can be used standalone. You just have to either download the source from github, or download the gem and extract its contents manually.
After you've done that you have to add the lib folder of the gem into the load path ($:) of Ruby. For example:
$:.unshift(File.expand_path("nokogiri-1.6.1/lib"))
require 'nokogiri'
Assuming you are running Ruby in the current directory and the Nokogiri source is in the folder nokogiri-1.6.1.
But remember that first you have to do the same with all Nokogiri prerequisites. I.e. all the libraries Nokogiri depends on.
Another option, which is what I would do, is to install RubyGems in your home directory. That can get a little bit tricky though, but it's possible by downloading the RubyGems package and running something like:
ruby setup.rb --prefix=/home/my_user_name/rubygems
Then you need to set up the ENV variables GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH to point to a location in your home directory where you want all your gems to be installed. See "What's the difference between GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH?" for a description of what they do.
You will also need to add something like /home/my_user_name/rubygems/bin to your PATH so that the gem command can be found by the shell.
Related
How do I configure bundler so that when I run bundle install it looks for gems under /my/custom/path first and if it doesn't find there then try to fetch them from a ruby gem remote repository hosted under https://a.nice.host and downloads those into ./local/relative/path (relative to cwd for example). I would like to avoid the bundler looking at default gem installation system path or rubygems.org
The syntax for sourcing a gem from a local folder is:
gem 'some-gem-name', path: '/my/custom/path'
And the syntax for specifying a custom source is:
gem 'another-gem-name', source: 'https://a.nice.host'
And to install gems into a specific local folder, you can run:
bundle install --path ./local/relative/path
Now, that's probably all the tools you need, in truth... (And in fact, especially for that last requirement, you may instead wish to look into rvm gemsets, or using bundle install --deployment.)
But you did also ask about "looking in a local folder first, and only falling back to a remote source if it doesn't exist". That's quite an odd requirement (usually you'd only want to explicitly opt-in to fetching gems from a local path?!), but to answer this question as you've asked it...
A Gemfile is literally just ruby code! So you can define this logic using... You guessed it, ruby! For example:
if File.exists?('/my/custom/path')
gem 'some-gem-name', path: '/my/custom/path'
else
gem 'some-gem-name', source: 'https://a.nice.host'
end
If this (unusual) pattern needs to be repeated in multiple places, you could wrap it into some helper method.
For more information on the configuration options of bundler, please see the documentation.
I'm developing a couple of private gems and I think I don't understand correctly the PATH/GEM_PATH and/or Bundler/RVM installation flow, would love if someone could chip in.
I have a repository with two gems (A & B for simplicity sake). I've developed the gems using the scaffolding + following the guidelines provided by this bundler tutorial.
Thanks to the Bundler project I have a few Rakefile tasks like rake build, rake install, rake install:local and rake release. Because of the private nature of these gems I can't release them to RubyGems (and we haven't looked into hosting our rubygems).
My machines are using RVM to manage ruby versions and Bundler version 1.15.1
What I want to do: Assuming a new machine/developer trying out the project, ideally we would cd into each of the subfolders (currently 2, gem A and gem B), run rake install and after that we should have the gems available system wide for the current user.
What is happening: The gems are built and work properly, but they are only available inside the subfolder of each gem i.e. gem A is only available inside the subfolder A and gem B is only available inside subfolder B.
What I've tried: So, after rake build/install/install:local a new .gem file is generated under pkg. I've tried to manually install the "compiled" file using gem install pkg/A.gem, gem install --local pkg/A.gem and gem install --local --user-install pkg/A.gem without success. (there are plenty of SO questions/answers about this)
I believe this has something to do with the PATH variables, but like I said before I don't fully understand the way they are managed. I get the following results from these commands:
# Our gem
> gem which A
/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0/gems/A-0.1.8/lib/A.rb
# Pry, available globally
> gem which pry
/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0/gems/pry-0.11.1/lib/pry.rb
I've been lost and frustrated for far too long now, any help is appreciated. Also open to hear suggestions of better private gem installation flows :)
Yes, it has something to do with your PATH variables. Your installation seems to be good.
I advise you to first affirm your gems installation path with:
echo $GEM_HOME
The double check your PATH to ensure its present and also confirm that the GEM home is also where the gem got installed into from the rake install
echo $PATH
If not, put it in your path and you should be fine with something like this:
echo PATH=$PATH:$GEM_HOME >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
Build your gem as per that guide you linked. You should end up with a gem file. Distribute this as you see fit (I use rsync/crontab to download newer gem versions but anything goes). User can install the gem as follows:
gem install --user-install /path/to/your/file.gem
This will install the gem in the user's ~/.gem/ruby/<version>/gems/<your-gem-name> directory.
Tried it with an empty gem (foodie, as in that example guide) and it works fine. But if you don't specify the --user-install parameter it will try to install in the system ruby dir (/usr/lib/ruby/gems...)
I forked a gem I use a lot in order to code some enhancements on it. I want it to be installed in a subfolder called ~/codebase/ruby, where I keep all my Ruby projects, arranged in subdirectories.
To do that, I built and installed the gem with the following commands:
gem build my_gem.gemspec
gem install mygem-x.x.gem -i./mygem
mygem is installed in ~/codebase/ruby/mygem. I can't get my client code (which is in another directory) to grab mygem from there.
I've tried all of the following without success:
Running ruby with argument -I<path_to_mygem>.
Adding <path_to_mygem> to PATH.
Putting :gempath: <path_to_mygem> into ~/.gemrc.
I know I could put the gem in ~/.gem/ruby/<version> (since it appears in gem env) and that would probably work, but that would break my existing directory structure of Ruby code, forcing me to code in a different directory only for mygem, which is something I want to avoid unless it's the only option.
Thoughts?
Hopefully you are using Bundler to load the required gems. Then you just specify the path to the gem file in your Gemfile:
gem 'my_gem', :path => '~/codebase/ruby/mygem'
I wonder whether Gemfile is a rails-tied file or not. If I have something as:
require 'json'
in my ruby file, the user tries to run it, and he doesn't have that gem, what will happen? How do I make sure that someone's computer knows what gems to install before running my script? I know bundle install exists in Rails, but what about outside Rails?
Gemfile isn't a Rails-tied file. It's the file that you can use any Ruby-based project with bundler gem installed. Once you've run bundle install command, another file Gemfile.lock is generated or updated if exists. By the way, gems you'll use are linked with locations in your computer/server you're developing.
I'm new to Ruby. I have a .bundle file. I put it in the source folder and did
require('my.bundle')
But when I call the methods in the bundle, the definition is not found. Do I have to install them or include them in some other way to access them?
I am on Ruby version 1.8.7 (latest version on Mac).
I highly recommend using RVM to manage your Ruby installation, including your gems, so if you don't already have that, get it and follow the instructions for installing it. Make sure you do the part about modifying your bash startup script or you'll see weird behavior, like the wrong Ruby being called. Also, use the steps in "RVM and RubyGems" to install your gems or you can run into weird behavior with gems being installed under the wrong or an unexpected Ruby.
Second, use the gem command to install gems:
gem install gem_to_install
replacing "gem_to_install" with the name of the gem you want, and it will be installed into the appropriate gem folder for your Ruby.
If you are on Ruby 1.92, and trying to require a gem to use as a module in your code, use:
require 'gemname'
if it is installed via the gem command. And, if it is a module you wrote or have in your program's directory or below it, use:
require_relative 'path/to/gem/gemname'
If you are on a Ruby < 1.9 you'll also need to add require 'rubygems' above your other require lines, then use require './path/to/gem/gemname'.
Thanks, but my .bundle is not in gems. How do I install/require a .bundle file I already have?
If you wrote it look into rubygems/gemcutter or bundler for info on bundling and managing gems.
You can install a gem without using the app by going into the directory containing the gem and running setup.rb. See http://i.loveruby.net/en/projects/setup/doc/usage.html for a decent writeup or the official docs at: http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/3