From: why the lucky stiff <ruby-talk@...>
Date: 2006-07-14T03:15:12+09:00
Subject: Re: Installing gems for a single user

On Fri, Jul 14, 2006 at 12:43:03AM +0900, jennyw wrote:
> I'm used to using gems locally where I can install them systemwide. But
> in a shared hosting environment, where there might be several systemwide
> gems installed by the host, there may be gems I want to install just in
> my home directory. Does RubyGems support this? In a way that your Ruby
> program can access both the systemwide and local gems?

Sure:

  mkdir ~/.gems
  export GEM_HOME=/home/jennyw/.gems
  wget http://code.whytheluckystiff.net/sources/rubyforge-0.0.1.gem
  gem install rubyforge-0.0.1.gem

And you should be able to `gem list`, `gem install`, etc.
  
In scripts where you don't have control over the environment and RubyGems is
already loaded, use:

  Gem.use_paths("/home/jennyw/.gems")

For other concrete examples, you might scan:
<http://balloon.hobix.com/lib/balloon.rb>

_why