Rails keeps telling me that it's not currently installed

Question

I use rvm to manage different rubies and their gemsets. My shell is zsh with oh-my-zsh configured with basic settings. Enabled oh-my-zsh plugins are ruby, rails, osx, and git. Here's the command I used to install ruby-1.8.7 and rails-3.0.7.

rvm install 1.8.7
rvm use 1.8.7
gem install rails -v=3.0.7

and then I typed rails and got:

Rails is not currently installed on this system. To get the latest version, simply type:

    $ sudo gem install rails

You can then rerun your "rails" command.

I've tried more thorough installs also, Like reinstall rubygems after switching to ruby-1.8.7, or create a completely new gemset, but with no luck.

Here's the rvm info:

ruby-1.8.7-p352@rails:

  system:
    uname:       "Darwin yicai.local 10.8.0 Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0: Tue Jun  7 16:32:41 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1504.15.3~1/RELEASE_X86_64 x86_64"
    bash:        "/bin/bash => GNU bash, version 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin10.0)"
    zsh:         "/bin/zsh => zsh 4.3.9 (i386-apple-darwin10.0)"

  rvm:
    version:      "rvm 1.8.6 by Wayne E. Seguin ([email protected]) [https://rvm.beginrescueend.com/]"

  ruby:
    interpreter:  "ruby"
    version:      "1.8.7"
    date:         "2011-06-30"
    platform:     "i686-darwin10.8.0"
    patchlevel:   "2011-06-30 patchlevel 352"
    full_version: "ruby 1.8.7 (2011-06-30 patchlevel 352) [i686-darwin10.8.0]"

  homes:
    gem:          "/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@rails"
    ruby:         "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352"

  binaries:
    ruby:         "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352/bin/ruby"
    irb:          "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352/bin/irb"
    gem:          "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352/bin/gem"
    rake:         "/Users/nil/.rvm/bin/rake"

  environment:
    PATH:         "/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@rails/bin:/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@global/bin:/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352/bin:/Users/nil/.rvm/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/usr/local/sbin"
    GEM_HOME:     "/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@rails"
    GEM_PATH:     "/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@rails:/Users/nil/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352@global"
    MY_RUBY_HOME: "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352"
    IRBRC:        "/Users/nil/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.8.7-p352/.irbrc"
    RUBYOPT:      ""
    gemset:       "rails"

and the gem version is 1.8.10, the latest.

Answer 1

If you're running a rails command immediately after installing rails, you will need to restart your terminal before your commands will be recognized.

Answer 2

I had this problem today. Not completely related to your question, but since this page is what comes up in Google when I search for "Rails is not currently installed on this system", I thought I would add my answer:

What happened is that I was using ruby 1.9.2 with rails for a while, but then I needed to use ruby 1.8.7 to run some other script that I found.

Afterwards, I wanted to change by system back to using 1.9.2, and that's where the problem started:

$ rvm list

=> ruby-1.8.7-p352 [ x86_64 ]
ruby-1.9.2-p290 [ x86_64 ]


$ rvm use 1.9.2

I thought that would do the trick. But no, that gives me the "Rails is not currently installed on this system" message.

What I had forgotten is that I had configured rails using an rvm gemset. So I needed to specify the correct gemset when I was selecting which ruby version to make active.

$ rvm gemset list_all


gemsets for ruby-1.8.7-p352 (found in /Users/asgeo1/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.8.7-p352)
global


gemsets for ruby-1.9.2-p290 (found in /Users/asgeo1/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p290)
global
rails31


$ rvm use ruby-1.9.2-p290@rails31

That did the trick.

Answer 3

Mac OS X, rbenv, and rails

I was getting the exact same issue but with rbenv rather than rvm. After verifying a correct .bash_profile.

.bash_profile

export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:/usr/local/bin:$PATH"

eval "$(rbenv init -)"

Restart the shell

exec $SHELL -l

Check the path

echo $PATH

Finally

I repeatedly installed and uninstalled rails but it was never placed in the .rbenv/bin directory after rbenv rehash. In the end I did a find . -name rails and uninstalled every gem that was returned and uninstalled rails. Then:

$ gem install rails
$ rbenv rehash

$ which rails
/Users/palmerc/.rbenv/shims/rails

Answer 4

I had the same issue and found that RVM was not showing as installed either if I tried the rvm command. All it took to fix both problems was running this command in the terminal

$ source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm