Can't install gem using Bundler's Rakefile install task when developing a custom gem

Question

I'm developing a couple of private gems and I think I don't understand correctly the PATH/GEM_PATH and/or Bundler/RVM installation flow, would love if someone could chip in.

I have a repository with two gems (A & B for simplicity sake). I've developed the gems using the scaffolding + following the guidelines provided by this bundler tutorial.

Thanks to the Bundler project I have a few Rakefile tasks like rake build, rake install, rake install:local and rake release. Because of the private nature of these gems I can't release them to RubyGems (and we haven't looked into hosting our rubygems).

My machines are using RVM to manage ruby versions and Bundler version 1.15.1

What I want to do: Assuming a new machine/developer trying out the project, ideally we would cd into each of the subfolders (currently 2, gem A and gem B), run rake install and after that we should have the gems available system wide for the current user.

What is happening: The gems are built and work properly, but they are only available inside the subfolder of each gem i.e. gem A is only available inside the subfolder A and gem B is only available inside subfolder B.

What I've tried: So, after rake build/install/install:local a new .gem file is generated under pkg. I've tried to manually install the "compiled" file using gem install pkg/A.gem, gem install --local pkg/A.gem and gem install --local --user-install pkg/A.gem without success. (there are plenty of SO questions/answers about this)

I believe this has something to do with the PATH variables, but like I said before I don't fully understand the way they are managed. I get the following results from these commands:

# Our gem
> gem which A
/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0/gems/A-0.1.8/lib/A.rb

# Pry, available globally
> gem which pry
/home/ubuntu/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.4.0/gems/pry-0.11.1/lib/pry.rb

I've been lost and frustrated for far too long now, any help is appreciated. Also open to hear suggestions of better private gem installation flows :)

Answer 1

Yes, it has something to do with your PATH variables. Your installation seems to be good.

I advise you to first affirm your gems installation path with:

echo $GEM_HOME

The double check your PATH to ensure its present and also confirm that the GEM home is also where the gem got installed into from the rake install

echo $PATH

If not, put it in your path and you should be fine with something like this:

echo PATH=$PATH:$GEM_HOME >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

Answer 2

Build your gem as per that guide you linked. You should end up with a gem file. Distribute this as you see fit (I use rsync/crontab to download newer gem versions but anything goes). User can install the gem as follows:

gem install --user-install /path/to/your/file.gem

This will install the gem in the user's ~/.gem/ruby/<version>/gems/<your-gem-name> directory.

Tried it with an empty gem (foodie, as in that example guide) and it works fine. But if you don't specify the --user-install parameter it will try to install in the system ruby dir (/usr/lib/ruby/gems...)