RVM vs MacPorts for managing RoR

Question

Hello, I'm diving into Ruby on Rails and two tools were suggested to me right from the start, RVM and MacPorts. I'm using RVM at the moment to manage my ruby and rails installs, so MacPorts doesn't appear to offer me much that I don't already have. I certainly see the differences between the two, RVM is primarily used for Ruby installations, whereas MacPorts offers others open source insatlls, but I wondering why I would use both if I'm only working with RoR. Your thoughts?

Thanks so much in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Sometimes you need to install Gem which needs C libraries to work and compile. There comes MacPorts (or I personally prefer HomeBrew). You install the C library with MacPorts, then you install the Gem as usual.

MacPorts and RVM are complementary, one doesn't exclude the other.