At this point as a Rubyist the only thing you really need is rubygems (of any version) on your computer. gem install rvm and then rvm install RUBY_VERSION.

indeed. I stopped worrying about native system ruby version since moving to rvm. it is almost the only way to keep you sane while dealing with distros and ruby versions.

Thank God for RVM! I'm soooo happy not to have to deal with distro ruby versions anymore.

Ok, so maybe I should thank Wayne instead ;-)

What's the best way to get rubygems with no other ruby packages on my system? Package manager, or dl and compile it?

My package manager wants to install ruby, irb, and a couple other 1.9.1 packages with it that I'm not sure I'll want after using rvm to install the 1.9.2 versions.

Go with whatever your distro provides as a default. RVM completely segregates your RVM Rubies from your system Ruby, so you're far better off with a "common" system Ruby install than you are trying to hack together a stripped down Ruby install. The package maintainers already know the platform specific idiosyncrasies you'll need to work around, so might as well leverage that. You may also encounter other software that expects a certain system Ruby environment on your system, so there's that too.

Thanks! Will use both the distro default and RVM.

  bash < <( curl http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/releases/rvm-install-head )

See http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/rvm/install/

Thanks!

People still use Ruby packages from their Linux distribution? I've always compiled, especially since Debian cripples RubyGems. Either that or I use ArchLinux, which uses the actual stable version of the software.

The most popular way (and easy, really) has always been to curl and compile yourself.

And these days RVM is growing up on production servers too, because it's really convenient if you have many apps each with the exact version it requires.

I would speculate that anyone doing any real work in Ruby doesn't wait on the distro to provide it. I don't do that with Perl, I compile my own. I would imagine Rubyists are the same way too. Anyway, kudos to the Ruby folks.

Off-topic, but have you tried Gugod's Perlbrew for handling multiple Perl interpreters? It's like rvm, but for Perl. I've been using it for a bit with great results.

http://github.com/gugod/App-perlbrew

When I tried it (earlier this year), it wasn't quite like RVM. RVM is very versatile, powerful and polished. Perlbrew is getting there, but seems good only for particular limited ranges of use. Things I got used to with RVM weren't ready yet in Perlbrew. Various Perl versions wouldn't compile for me successfully. You can also compare the Synopsis of Perlbrew with the range of rvm commands and switches to get a feel for how much is missing in Perlbrew. I really wish Perlbrew gave me a good out-of-the-box experience, because it would be very handy for me, but that wasn't the case.

I have heard of it. Haven't got any "tuits" to check it out at the moment. One of those "back of the brain" things though.

If it was any software but Ruby, I'd agree with you, but Rubyists tend to be into the cutting edge, as well as not using package managers to install Ruby. The conventional wisdom (at least for Ubuntu) has been "don't use apt, compile your own" for a while now. Or even better, use rvm.