How to: Install, Update and Remove RubyGems

How to: Install, Update and Remove RubyGems

I just had a brief experience installing a RubyGem so I thought I would share a little bit of what I learned about managing RubyGems. Similar to packages (apt-get) you can search through them, install them, remove them, and update them with simple commands. Below is a brief summary designed just to quickly point individuals to the instructions needed to accomplish the management of RubyGems:

1. Searching (where mysql is the the search term: it will find any gem that contains the word mysql. The address after –remote indicates the online library where the search will be performed)
   1. gem search mysql –remote gems.rubyforge.org
2. Installing (where mysql is the gem you are installing and –include-dependencies indicates an automatic answer to yes when it asks to install a needed dependency)
   1. sudo gem install mysql
   2. sudo gem install mysql –include-dependencies
3. Updating (you may update all gems or specify a particular one like mysql)
   1. sudo gem update
   2. sudo gem update mysql
4. Removing (where mysql is the gem you wish to uninstall)
   1. sudo gem uninstall mysql
5. Clean / Removes old versions (I still struggle to understand the difference with update)
   1. sudo gem clean
6. List installed Gems
   1. gem list