I’m trying to cover all the questions that come up for my Ruby installation guide. This one comes up a lot when people install Ruby with Homebrew (for example, following the Jekyll installation instructions). Let me know if I missed anything or anything’s unclear.
Great article! One question though, why did you decide to omit the global configuration for Ruby when using a version manager?
E.g.: asdf global ruby 2.7.0
Thanks for the kind words! You had me worried for a second as I thought maybe I overlooked it. But asdf global ruby 2.7.0 is there under Set Ruby version with asdf on Mac. A bit buried as the article is dense, yea.
What were you using before asdf? Been happy with it?
Apologies, Daniel! I think I skipped that section of the article. I see it now!
I’ve been using asdf for years now. It’s one of those things I can’t do without anymore. :)
So is rvm no longer fashionable? I’ve used (and contributed to) it for years and never really explored except a brief flirtation with ruby-install and chruby that didn’t go well enough to merit continuing it.
Do you recall why chruby didn’t work well for you? Would be good to know as I recommend it over rbenv and rvm.
If rvm is working well for you, stick with it, changing may not be worth the effort. After Bundler was added to Ruby, rvm lost favor (with some) as its gemset feature is no longer needed. Rbenv has always had its fans and chruby gained favor among the “smaller is better and more Unix-like” crowd. Right now, asdf seems to be gaining in popularity as it can accommodate multiple languages (Ruby, Node, etc) and that’s useful since the Rails installation got bloated with a requirement for Node as well as Ruby. That’s current fashion, as I see it :-)
I’m not sure if it’s completely fair to say that chruby is simpler than rbenv. It looks like they have almost identical user-facing features, the differences between them now just look like implementation differences. (I’d believe that the implementation is simpler though! I haven’t compared myself)
That said, I’m definitely a “rbenv fan” haha. It’s reliable and invisible; I only think about it when starting a project and when upgrading Ruby versions (rbenv handles shims automatically now). One feature of rbenv I find useful is that it supports fish shell out of the box
I don’t, but it might have been because I was still trying to use gemsets. I don’t remember how long ago this was but a lot of my Ruby projects are old and their env was setup during peak RVM popularity. Since then, there’s an explosion of version managers. I’ve recently moved onto a Python team and am really digging pyenv.
I don’t, but it might have been because I was still trying to use gemsets. I don’t remember how long ago this was but a lot of my Ruby projects are old and their env was setup during peak RVM popularity. Since then, there’s an explosion of version managers. I’ve recently moved onto a Python team and am really digging pyenv.
Thanks! The blog format of most sites doesn’t suit me for writing guides or tutorials about technology. I prefer in-depth structured articles. Dev.to, Hackernoon, Hashnode have a place but I’m trying to make a better site for “evergreen” long-lasting articles. You’re right, mac.install.guide could be expanded beyond Ruby to other topics. Want to contribute? How can I contact you? I’m daniel@danielkehoe.com via email. Or PM me here.
I’m trying to cover all the questions that come up for my Ruby installation guide. This one comes up a lot when people install Ruby with Homebrew (for example, following the Jekyll installation instructions). Let me know if I missed anything or anything’s unclear.
Great article! One question though, why did you decide to omit the global configuration for Ruby when using a version manager? E.g.:
asdf global ruby 2.7.0Thanks for the kind words! You had me worried for a second as I thought maybe I overlooked it. But
asdf global ruby 2.7.0is there under Set Ruby version with asdf on Mac. A bit buried as the article is dense, yea.What were you using before asdf? Been happy with it?
Apologies, Daniel! I think I skipped that section of the article. I see it now! I’ve been using asdf for years now. It’s one of those things I can’t do without anymore. :)
So is
rvmno longer fashionable? I’ve used (and contributed to) it for years and never really explored except a brief flirtation withruby-installandchrubythat didn’t go well enough to merit continuing it.Do you recall why chruby didn’t work well for you? Would be good to know as I recommend it over rbenv and rvm.
If rvm is working well for you, stick with it, changing may not be worth the effort. After Bundler was added to Ruby, rvm lost favor (with some) as its gemset feature is no longer needed. Rbenv has always had its fans and chruby gained favor among the “smaller is better and more Unix-like” crowd. Right now, asdf seems to be gaining in popularity as it can accommodate multiple languages (Ruby, Node, etc) and that’s useful since the Rails installation got bloated with a requirement for Node as well as Ruby. That’s current fashion, as I see it :-)
I’m not sure if it’s completely fair to say that chruby is simpler than rbenv. It looks like they have almost identical user-facing features, the differences between them now just look like implementation differences. (I’d believe that the implementation is simpler though! I haven’t compared myself)
That said, I’m definitely a “rbenv fan” haha. It’s reliable and invisible; I only think about it when starting a project and when upgrading Ruby versions (rbenv handles shims automatically now). One feature of rbenv I find useful is that it supports fish shell out of the box
All good points for rbenv. Handling shims automatically was a great step forward. So yes, really just implementation differences at this point.
I don’t, but it might have been because I was still trying to use gemsets. I don’t remember how long ago this was but a lot of my Ruby projects are old and their env was setup during peak RVM popularity. Since then, there’s an explosion of version managers. I’ve recently moved onto a Python team and am really digging pyenv.
I don’t, but it might have been because I was still trying to use gemsets. I don’t remember how long ago this was but a lot of my Ruby projects are old and their env was setup during peak RVM popularity. Since then, there’s an explosion of version managers. I’ve recently moved onto a Python team and am really digging pyenv.
This is a pretty cool idea for a site. I can see how it would be fairly useful as a catch-all for node/python/homebrew/go/eclipse/gcc/etc…
Thanks! The blog format of most sites doesn’t suit me for writing guides or tutorials about technology. I prefer in-depth structured articles. Dev.to, Hackernoon, Hashnode have a place but I’m trying to make a better site for “evergreen” long-lasting articles. You’re right, mac.install.guide could be expanded beyond Ruby to other topics. Want to contribute? How can I contact you? I’m daniel@danielkehoe.com via email. Or PM me here.