I can't install any gem or updates in Leopard

Question

bogon:~ Zhulin$ ruby -v
ruby 1.8.6 (2009-06-08 patchlevel 369) [universal-darwin9.0]
bogon:~ Zhulin$ rails -v
Rails 1.2.6
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gems -v
-bash: gems: command not found
bogon:~ Zhulin$ sudo gem install heroku
Password:
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException)
    HTTP Response 302 fetching http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gem -v
1.0.1
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gem list

*** LOCAL GEMS ***

actionmailer (1.3.6)
actionpack (1.13.6)
actionwebservice (1.2.6)
activerecord (1.15.6)
activesupport (1.4.4)
acts_as_ferret (0.4.1)
capistrano (2.0.0)
cgi_multipart_eof_fix (2.5.0)
daemons (1.0.9)
dnssd (0.6.0)
fastthread (1.0.1)
fcgi (0.8.7)
ferret (0.11.4)
gem_plugin (0.2.3)
highline (1.2.9)
hpricot (0.6)
libxml-ruby (0.9.5, 0.3.8.4)
mongrel (1.1.4)
needle (1.3.0)
net-sftp (1.1.0)
net-ssh (1.1.2)
rails (1.2.6)
rake (0.7.3)
RedCloth (3.0.4)
ruby-openid (1.1.4)
ruby-yadis (0.3.4)
rubynode (0.1.3)
sqlite3-ruby (1.2.1)
termios (0.9.4)
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gem -update
ERROR:  Invalid option: -update.  See 'gem --help'.
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gem update --system
Updating RubyGems...
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException)
    HTTP Response 302 fetching http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml
bogon:~ Zhulin$ gem install rubygems-update
ERROR:  While executing gem ... (Gem::RemoteSourceException)
    HTTP Response 302 fetching http://gems.rubyforge.org/yaml
bogon:~ Zhulin$ 

Anyone can help me figure it out?

Answer 1

If you have Leopard, you probably can use Ruby 1.8.7 with Rails 2.3.10.

Update your Ruby, and then

gem update --system

(or you might need to download RubyGems 1.3.7 from http://rubyforge.org/projects/rubygems/ unpack it, and run ruby setup.rb to get it)

After that, the commands can be

gem list
gem list -r rails
gem list -r rails$
gem list -rad rails$   <-- list all rails, with description, remotely
gem install haml
gem i fastercsv        <-- 'i' is a shorthand for install

gem i rails --no-rdoc --no-ri    <-- if you install a lot of gems by creating 
                                     different gemsets using RVM, and don't want 
                                     the docs every time

sudo gem i sqlite3-ruby          <-- on some systems, the sudo is needed, but if
                                     using RVM and you are not dealing with "system"
                                     gems, the recommendation is don't use "sudo"

Answer 2

I really, really, recommend using RVM to install new versions of Ruby. RVM will put the target Ruby, plus associated gems, into a nice sandbox in your home directory, and you won't have to mess with your system installation of Ruby. If you decide to delete it at a later time it's a simple matter of deleting one directory. Try that with a modified system installation and see what happens. :-)

Messing with the system is sometimes safe, sometimes bad/dangerous/fatal, depending on what relies on it. Going the RVM route only code you write will be relying on the Ruby in your sandbox. In addition you will not need to run as sudo, so your installs are less error prone.

RVM is available at: rvm.beginrescueend.com. Be sure to follow the instructions on the installation page.