RubyGems
RubyGems is a package management framework for Ruby.
A package (also known as a library) contains a set of functionality that can be invoked by a Ruby program, such as reading and parsing an XML file.
We call these packages "gems" and RubyGems is a tool to install, create, manage and load these packages in your Ruby environment.
RubyGems is also a client for RubyGems.org, a public repository of Gems that allows you to publish a Gem
that can be shared and used by other developers. See our guide on publishing a Gem at guides.rubygems.org
Getting Started
Installing and managing a Gem is done through the gem command. To install a Gem such as Faraday:
gem install faraday
RubyGems will download the Faraday Gem from RubyGems.org and install it into your Ruby environment.
Finally, inside your Ruby program, load the Faraday gem and start hacking:
require 'faraday'
response = Faraday.get('https://rubygems.org')
# do something with `response`...
For more information about how to use RubyGems, see our RubyGems basics guide at guides.rubygems.org
Requirements
- RubyGems supports Ruby 3.0 or later.
Installation
RubyGems is already installed in your Ruby environment, you can check the version you have installed by running gem --version in your terminal emulator.
In some cases Ruby & RubyGems may be provided as OS packages. This is not a
recommended way to use Ruby & RubyGems. It's better to use a Ruby Version
Manager, such as rbenv or
chruby. If you still want to use the
version provided by your OS package manager, please also use your OS package
manager to upgrade rubygems, and disregard any other installation instructions
given below.
If you would like to manually install RubyGems:
- Download from https://rubygems.org/pages/download, unpack, and
cd into RubyGems' src
- OR clone this repository and
cd into the repository
Install RubyGems by running:
$ ruby setup.rb
For more details and other options, see:
$ ruby setup.rb --help
Upgrading RubyGems
To upgrade to the latest RubyGems, run:
$ gem update --system
See UPGRADING for more details and alternative instructions.
Release policy
RubyGems and Bundler are released in sync, although they do not share their
major version number. It is planned that also their major version numbers will
be sync'ed in the future.
The release policy is somewhat similar to the release policy of Ruby itself:
- Frequent patch releases (every 2-4 weeks) including bug fixes, minor
enhancements, small features, or even medium sized features declared as
experimental for battle testing.
- Yearly minor releases including bigger features, and minor breaking changes
(affecting only edge cases and a very small set of users).
- Occasional major releases (replacing yearly minors) including major breaking
changes.
Documentation
RubyGems uses rdoc for documentation. A compiled set of the docs
can be viewed online at docs.ruby-lang.org.
RubyGems also provides a comprehensive set of guides which covers numerous topics such as
creating a new gem, security practices and other resources at https://guides.rubygems.org
Getting Help
Filing Tickets
Got a bug and you're not sure? You're sure you have a bug, but don't know
what to do next? In any case, let us know about it! The best place
for letting the RubyGems team know about bugs or problems you're having is
on the RubyGems issues page at GitHub.
Bundler Compatibility
See https://bundler.io/compatibility for known issues.
Supporting
RubyGems is a community project. Please consider sponsoring individual contributors for their great OSS
work.
In addition, Ruby Central administers grant-funded work for improvements to ruby/rubygems, as well as running
RubyGems.org (the service). You can support Ruby Central by attending or sponsoring
a RubyConf, or by joining as a supporting member.
Contributing
If you'd like to contribute to RubyGems, that's awesome, and we <3 you. Check out our guide to contributing for more information.
Code of Conduct
Everyone interacting in the RubyGems project’s codebases, issue trackers, chat rooms, and mailing lists is expected to follow the contributor code of conduct.
