Why are the gems not findable by 'gem list local' even though the gem folder is full of installed gems?

Question

When I type:

gem env

on my Windows system, it produces this info:

RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.3.5
  - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2010-01-10 patchlevel 249) [i386-mingw32]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: C:/Ruby/bin/ruby.exe
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: C:/Ruby/bin
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86-mingw32
  - GEM PATHS:
     - C:/Ruby/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
     - C:/Users/pb/.gem/ruby/1.8
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :benchmark => false
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - http://gems.rubyforge.org/

When I go to the GEM path:

C:\Ruby\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\gems

I see many gem folders with all of the installed gems. But when I type

gem list local

I get an empty listing:

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

Why are the gems not findable?

Answer 1

I'm not sure, but i think the command is

gem list --local

Answer 2

gem list local tells RubyGems to list all gems whose name starts with the string local. (See gem help list for details.) Do you have any gems with that name installed? Otherwise, it's not really surprising that the list is empty.