I think I installed rvm correctly. When I type in rvm -v it outputs
rvm 1.25.33 (stable) by Wayne E. Seguin <[email protected]>, Michal Papis <[email protected]> [https://rvm.io/]
However, I am trying to install the gem rspec. I type in
gem install rspec
but the output is
ERROR: While executing gem ... (Gem::FilePermissionError)
You don't have write permissions for the /Library/Ruby/Gems/2.0.0 directory.
What should I do? What is going wrong? I can't understand the rvm docs either!
RVM controls which Ruby your current shell points to, but it doesn't install a user-controlled Ruby for you by default. If you haven't installed any specific Ruby versions via RVM, the only Ruby you have is the one OS X installed and that requires sudo permissions to write to.
You can see available Rubies with:
> rvm list
rvm rubies
=* ruby-2.1.2 [ x86_64 ]
# => - current
# =* - current && default
# * - default
In my case I have 2.1.2 installed and it's both the current Ruby and the default Ruby when I start a new shell:
> which ruby
/Users/ian/.rvm/rubies/ruby-2.1.2/bin/ruby
To install a Ruby version with RVM do:
> rvm install ruby-2.1
No binary rubies available for: osx/10.10/x86_64/ruby-2.1.3.
Continuing with compilation. Please read 'rvm help mount' to get more information on binary rubies.
...snip...
Install of ruby-2.1.3 - #complete
Ruby was built without documentation, to build it run: rvm docs generate-ri
Now that you have an RVM-managed Ruby installed that's owned by you specifically you can gem-install anything you like without needing to use sudo:
> rvm list
rvm rubies
* ruby-2.1.2 [ x86_64 ]
=> ruby-2.1.3 [ x86_64 ]
# => - current
# =* - current && default
# * - default
> rvm gemdir
/Users/ian/.rvm/gems/ruby-2.1.3
> gem install packer-config
That gem has been installed for the 2.1.3 version of Ruby that RVM put under ~/.rvm for me. If I was to switch to the 2.1.2 version via rvm use ruby-2.1.2 I would not see that gem, I'd have to re-install it to make it available to that Ruby version.
You can also manage gems as sets so they're not even shared with a Ruby install. See the gemset basics on the RVM web site for more details.
That command is trying to install the gem in the global directory (available to every user on the computer), if that's what you want then execute the command with sudo. But if you just want to install rspec you can do gem install rspec.
You can check if you are using the gem executable from rvm by doing which gem if it shows a function then it's from rvm. If the output is a path then do rvm use default.
