gemsh

Ultra-simple gem environment builder.

Installation

This installs to /usr/local:

$ make install

$PREFIX is respected if you want to install somewhere else.

To make the debian packaging slightly easier, the man page is installed as a separate task:

$ make install_docs

As mentioned, a debian package can be built and installed in the usual way.

Usage

$ gemsh env

This builds a gem environment in env/. To use this environment, run:

$ env/bin/exec /bin/bash

This launches a bash shell with GEM_HOME and GEM_PATH set so that when you run gem install foo, the foo gem is installed to env/gem_home/gems. This arrangement also works with bundler,

Because gem install caches the .gem file, you'll find a cache of the installation packages at env/gem_home/cache.

Binaries installed by gem install will be in env/gem_home/bin. This directory is prepended to $PATH by env/bin/exec.

For the few more details of what env/bin/exec actually does, see env/bin/activate, which is where the relevant environment variables are set.

Note: because the absolute path to env is baked into the environment, you cannot move the environment around the filesystem. It won't work when it's at its new location. However, if you re-run gemsh at the new location, it'll simply overwrite the paths with the new location so you won't have to reinstall all the gems.

Author

Alex Young alex@blackkettle.org