Can't install gems on OS X "El Capitan"

Question

Disclaimer: @theTinMan and other Ruby developers often point out not to use sudo when installing gems and point to things like RVM. That's absolutely true when doing Ruby development. Go ahead and use that.

However, many of us just want some binary that happens to be distributed as a gem (e.g. fakes3, cocoapods, xcpretty …). I definitely don't want to bother with managing a separate ruby. Here are your quicker options:

Option 1: Keep using sudo

Using sudo is probably fine if you want these tools to be installed globally.

The problem is that these binaries are installed into /usr/bin, which is off-limits since El Capitan. However, you can install them into /usr/local/bin instead. That's where Homebrew install its stuff, so it probably exists already.

sudo gem install fakes3 -n/usr/local/bin

Gems will be installed into /usr/local/bin and every user on your system can use them if it's in their PATH.

Option 2: Install in your home directory (without sudo)

The following will install gems in ~/.gem and put binaries in ~/bin (which you should then add to your PATH).

gem install fakes3 --user-install -n~/bin

Make it the default

Either way, you can add these parameters to your ~/.gemrc so you don't have to remember them:

gem: -n/usr/local/bin

i.e. echo "gem: -n/usr/local/bin" >> ~/.gemrc

or

gem: --user-install -n~/bin

i.e. echo "gem: --user-install -n~/bin" >> ~/.gemrc

(Tip: You can also throw in --no-document to skip generating Ruby developer documentation.)

In my case, I had to re-install Ruby using Brew. That seems to have solved the problem as I can install gems again.

brew install ruby

After this, you need to log out and log back in, either graphically or just restarting your terminal.

That is because of the new security function of OS X "El Capitan". Try adding --user-install instead of using sudo:

$ gem install *** --user-install

For example, if you want to install fake3 just use:

$ gem install fake3 --user-install

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin cocoapods

Try this. It will definately work.

You have to update Xcode to the newest one (v7.0.1) and everything will work as normal.

If after you install the newest Xcode and still doesn't work try to install gem in this way:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin GEM_NAME_HERE

For example:

sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin fakes3
sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin compass
sudo gem install -n /usr/local/bin susy