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installing rubygems and individual gems on OSX "mountain lion"

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Richard Karpinski

08 Aug, 2012 06:03 PM

I've recently upgraded by MacBook Pro to OSX "mountain lion" [10.8 (12A269)] and have installed Xcode 4.4.1 with the command line extensions. Still at ruby 1.8.24 (comes with mountain lion) [don't think I need 1.9]:

rick ] gem --version administrators-MacBook-Pro:~/Sites/snm 1.8.24
[ rick ] ruby --version administrators-MacBook-Pro:~/Sites/snm ruby 1.8.7 (2012-02-08 patchlevel 358) [universal-darwin12.0]

Forgive me, but I am terminally confused about permissions:

I used
ruby setup.rb
on the ruby gems.zip download

but then tinkered with permissions so a regular user (not administrator, e.g. "rick" see above) could access both ruby and gem.

I think I used

gem install

rather than sudo gem install

but now think that may have been a mistake as I seem to have permission problems again with running some of the installed gems.

Most of the googling I did failed to provide "mountain lion"--or even OSX--specific answers.
Can you set me straight?

Thanks in advance.

--RK

1. Support Staff 2 Posted by Eric Hodel on 08 Aug, 2012 06:13 PM

   

   Please show the output of gem env

   If you have modified the permissions of the Apple Ruby installation you may need to periodically re-apply them. Apple may revert changes you make when you install software updates.

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2. 3 Posted by Richard Karpinski on 08 Aug, 2012 10:07 PM

   

   [ rick ] gem env administrators-MacBook-Pro:~/Sites/snm RubyGems Environment:
   - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.8.24 - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2012-02-08 patchlevel 358) [universal-darwin12.0] - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/bin/ruby - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/bin - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:

   - ruby
   - universal-darwin-12
   

   • GEM PATHS:
     • /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8
     • /Users/rick/.gem/ruby/1.8
     • /System/Library/Frameworks/Ruby.framework/Versions/1.8/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
   • GEM CONFIGURATION:
     • :update_sources => true
     • :verbose => true
     • :benchmark => false
     • :backtrace => false
     • :bulk_threshold => 1000
     • :sources => ["http://rubygems.org/", "http://gems.rubyforge.org", "http://gems.github.com/"]
   • REMOTE SOURCES:
     • http://rubygems.org/
     • http://gems.rubyforge.org
     • http://gems.github.com/ [ rick ]

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3. Support Staff 4 Posted by Eric Hodel on 08 Aug, 2012 10:11 PM

   

   If you change the permissions on /Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8 you may need to periodically reapply your changes.

   You can set all: --user-install in your ~/.gemrc to install gems into your home directory to avoid this extra step, or you can set GEM_HOME to a directory you control to avoid typing sudo.

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4. 5 Posted by Richard Karpinski on 11 Aug, 2012 06:05 PM

   

   Many thanks for your advice!
   I got things going by adding these lines to .gemrc:

   make install location accessible to 'rick'

   all:
   - user-install then needed to put export PATH=$PATH:/Users/rick/.gem/ruby/1.8/bin
   into my bash_profile

   but that seems to let everything work without "sudo".

   ---

   A couple of things, though:
   http://docs.rubygems.org/read/chapter/11
   didn't help me figure out how to put things correctly into .gemrc (e.g. "all:" and leading colons in ":sources", ":benchmark", etc.); and it wasn't clarified in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YAML

   ....not a complaint, just a plea for more explicit clarification for newbies like me.

   How about a HOWTO for installing (or not) various versions of RUBY under "mountain lion" and one for setting up GEMS in various scenarios under "mountain lion".

   Again, many thanks.

   --RK

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5. Nick Quaranto closed this discussion on 14 Aug, 2012 01:28 AM.

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