rbenv says installed version is not installed

Question

I just installed ruby 3.0.4 using rbenv install 3.0.4, which worked, but rbenv still says:

$ rbenv versions
rbenv: version `3.0' is not installed (set by /home/dombek/code/.ruby-version)
  system
  3.0.4

Shouldn't it find 3.0.4 when 3.0 is requested? How can I fix that?

Answer 1

Shouldn't it find 3.0.4 when 3.0 is requested?

Nope. This is expected behaviour. rbenv expects the exact version specified in the .ruby-version file to be installed and set for use.

How can I fix that?

Depends what you mean by fix. The obvious answer here is to just specify the correct version:

echo '3.0.4' > /home/dombek/code/.ruby-version

Alternatively, you can set 3.0.4 globally or locally using rbenv:

rbenv global 3.0.4
# or
rbenv local 3.0.4

After changing the version, you should rehash rbenv to apply changes:

rbenv rehash

Finally, I'm not sure how practical this is, but you could theoretically write a bash script that lets you specify a ruby version like "3.0". Something like:

set_nearest_rbenv_version() {
  desired_version=$1.*
  nearest_version=$(rbenv versions --bare | grep -E "^$desired_version" | tail -1)
  if [ -n "$nearest_version" ]; then
    rbenv global $nearest_version
    echo "Set to nearest version: $nearest_version"
  else
    echo "No matching versions found."
  fi
}

set_nearest_rbenv_version 3.0

^ untested.