Ruby standalone app deployment/distribution

Question

What's the best way to distribute a simple command-line Ruby app to clients in a way that would not require them to manually install Ruby and required Gems?

In my understanding this task boils down just to a couple of lines of SH/BAT code that does Ruby/Gems checks and if not found goes on with Ruby installation with RVM.

So do these lines of code exist already somewhere or will I need to write something on my own?

Answer 1

I've used this project for small scripts in the past, without any issues http://www.erikveen.dds.nl/rubyscript2exe/

It creates an EXE file out of your ruby script.

If you need something cross-platform, the BAT/sh option is probably best. You could grab RVM, have RVM install ruby, use bundler for your gems, and then launch the script.