How to delete a gem path?

Question

How can I delete the second path (/home/tom/.gem/ruby/1.8) of GEM PATHS: ?

Here's the output of $ gem env:

RubyGems Environment:

  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 1.3.5
  - RUBY VERSION: 1.8.7 (2009-06-12 patchlevel 174) [i486-linux]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /usr/bin/ruby1.8
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /usr/bin
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86-linux
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8
     - /home/tom/.gem/ruby/1.8
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :benchmark => false
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - http://gems.rubyforge.org/

I appreciate the help!

Answer 1

Override in your ~/.bashrc file?

#in ~/.bashrc
export GEM_PATH=/usr/lib/ruby/gems/1.8

Feels kind of hacky though.

Answer 2

You can’t! I also wanted to do it, and haven’t found a way. Then I looked for in RubyGems source (at github.com) and learned that it tries to get the path from etc/gemrc and ~/.gemrc. If it fails (and fails GEM_PATH environment variable too), it assumes ~/.gem to be the default path.

Therefore, Max William is right, and you have either to export GEM_PATH or to create a ~/.gemrc. And it’s not a hack, for sure! :-)

Hope to have cleared things a bit!