From: Jeremy Henty <jeremy@...>
Date: 2007-03-16T07:50:05+09:00
Subject: "gem update --system" breaks under a non-standard prefix

It appears that if you install rubygems under a non-standard prefix
then "gem update --system" breaks.

I have rubygems installed as a non-privileged user.  Everything works
fine with GEM_HOME and RUBYLIB set properly in the environment.  But,
when I try to upgrade rubygems from 0.9.1 -> 0.9.2 , "gem update
--system" fails.

[...]
setup.rb:515:in `initialize': Permission denied - /usr/bin/gem (Errno::EACCES)


Running "update_rubygems" manually doesn't fair any better.

$ update_rubygems
Error: Cannot find RubyGems Update Path!

RubyGems has already been updated.
The rubygems-update gem may now be uninstalled.
E.g.    gem uninstall rubygems-update


Eventually I found a successful workaround...

cd $GEM_HOME/gems/rubygems-update-*/ &&
ruby setup.rb all --prefix=$GEM_PREFIX

...where $GEM_PREFIX is the prefix I installed rubygems to.  I'm glad
that it worked, but surely it should be easier than this?  It would be
nice if "gem update --system" accepted --prefix=$GEM_PREFIX , but as
far as I can tell it does not.

Regards, 

Jeremy Henty