What are Homebrew, RVM, RubyGems, Bundler?

What is Homebrew?

Homebrew helps you easily install and uninstall programs to your computer (a package manager).

Examples: gcc, postgresql, heroku, gnuplot, redis, rbenv, python3, memcached, octave, git

Installing Homebrew

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

into terminal

Installing an application (formula) with Homebrew

brew install <programName>

brew install octave

Update Homebrew

brew update

Update applications with Homebrew

brew upgrade

More Docs

What is RVM?

It allows you to manage the your ruby environment for each project. This usually means which ruby of version you’re using.

This is useful because you might have an old project that you built with ruby 2.2.1 and they made a change in 2.2.2 that breaks your app and you don’t have the time or can’t fix the problem.

Rbenv is another ruby version manager.

Installing RVM

gpg --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3

\curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | bash -s stable

Looking at the versions of Ruby available

rvm list known

Installing a version of Ruby

rvm install <versionName>

rvm install 2.3.1

Changing the version of Ruby you’re using

rvm use <versionName>

rvm use 2.3.1

Changing the default version of Ruby

rvm use 2.3.1 --default

More Docs

What is RubyGems?

It’s a package manager for ruby, a programming language. It helps to install, update and uninstall programs that run with ruby which other people have build and you might want to use. RubyGems is called an application level package manager because it’s focused only those programs that run with ruby.

More application level package managers:

cocoapods and carthage for iOS development using objective-c and swift
npm for node
pip for python
more

Examples of gems: nokogiri, rspec, bundler, rails, rake

Installing RubyGems

It comes with ruby. If gem -v doesn’t provide a number, then download it here.

Installing a gem

gem install <gemName>

gem install bundler

Updating RubyGems

gem update --system

Updating gems

gem update

More docs

What is Bundle?

Bundle manages the gems that you need for each project. Bundle is itself a gem. Instead of having to gem install <gemName>, you can add the list of gems you need and it will gem install of them for you.

If you already have the gem, then it doesn’t need to install it again, but it also knows the dependencies for gems you might want to use and will install those for you automatically.

RVM also has “gemsets” which is very similar.

In your project, you should have a Gemfile in the root directory.

It looks like this:

source 'https://rubygems.org'
gem '<gemName>'
gem '<gemName2>'

Install all the gems in the gemfile

bundle install

Update the version of the gems

bundle update

Update bundler

gem update