From: Jim Weirich <jim@...>
Date: 2004-07-31T02:30:46+09:00
Subject: Re: gems and /usr/local


Hans Fugal said:
> I submitted this bug, and it has been replied to:
>
> http://rubyforge.org/tracker/?func=detail&atid=575&aid=717&group_id=126
>
> I don't pretend to be an expert on the "way things should be", so I
> thought it would be better to at least allow the opportunity for
> discussion by bringing it up here.
>
> My own preference for all things, ruby or otherwise, is that anything I
> install by hand goes under /usr/local, and anything that is installed by
> the primary package manager (dpkg in my case) goes in /usr. That way I
> can easily clean up the cruft without worrying about messing up files
> that belong to packages. Theoritcally there are other reasons too, like
> having a shared and/or readonly /usr. Gems itself installs in
> /usr/local/lib/site_ruby, but the gems get installed under
> /usr/lib/ruby. Gems ought to play in /usr/local or in /usr, but whatever
> it does it should be consistent. My own preference as you can guess is
> /usr/local.

You can control where the gems are installed with the GEM_HOME and
GEM_PATH environment variables, or the --install-dir command line option. 
See http://rubygems.rubyforge.org/wiki/wiki.pl?EnvironmentVariables for
details.

By default, gems are installed whereever the ruby interpreter is found.

-- 
-- Jim Weirich     jim@weirichhouse.org    http://onestepback.org
-----------------------------------------------------------------
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct,
not tried it." -- Donald Knuth (in a memo to Peter van Emde Boas)