How to tell bundler where the Gemfile is?

Question

I'm trying to run a Ruby script from cron.

The script uses Bundler to manage gem dependencies. Since cron does not run in $PWD I get a 'Could not locate Gemfile' error from Bundler everytime, which makes sense since Gemfile is not in the currrent path when running from cron.

Is there a way to tell Bundler to use a Gemfile not in the current path?

Answer 1

The best thing to do would be to cd into the directory in question in your cron. You could also use the BUNDLE_GEMFILE environment variable to point at the Gemfile. Please let us know if you have any problems with BUNDLE_GEMFILE.

Answer 2

You could have the main script change its dir:

Dir.chdir File.dirname(__FILE__) 

You might have to tweak it using File.expand_path to get your app's root dir (where the Gemfile is). Suppose your script is /apps/myapp/bin/main.rb; the chdir line would be:

Dir.chdir File.expand_path('../..', __FILE__) 

Of course, you have to make sure your app doesn't break because of the chdir - but it shouldn't if you're cd-ing in the cron.

If the script is a daemon and you want it to be changed to the root dir / during normal operation, you can do that after calling Bundler.setup or Bundler.require.

While you could do cd in the cron, I prefer not to, because crons are already hard enough to read and maintain.