"RVM is not a function" error

Question

RVM is installed on my machine (running Mac OSX 10.6.8), correctly and it runs fine. The odd thing is that to run it, I have to use source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm for every new session. I tried making a symlink from it to /opt/local/bin/rvm, but when it runs it does nothing. I also tried creating a symlink from ~/.rvm/bin/rvm to /opt/local/bin/rvm, and when I run rvm in the Terminal it displays the help page, as expected. But when I try rvm use some_ruby_version it always displays "RVM is not a function, selecting rubies with 'rvm use ...' will not work.". How can I fix this?

My goal is to get it to the the point that I don't have to type the source command every session, and for some reason ~/.profile does not execute.

Answer 1

You have to source the RVM script into the current session because it makes changes to the shell environment - and it is absolutely impossible for that to be done from a child process. Your efforts at running RVM as an external command cannot succeed.

To actually fix this you have two choices:

1. Configure your terminal emulator to start a login shell, rather than a non-login shell, so that your .profile is loaded.
2. Modify .bashrc to source RVM instead, which works for non-login shells as well.

To do the second you can just add to ~/.bashrc:

if test -f ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm; then     [ "$(type -t rvm)" = "function" ] || source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm fi 

Answer 2

If you are using zsh as shell instead bash, you have to:

1.

vi ~/.zshrc  

2. Like Matt said, add:

if test -f ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm; then    [ "$(type -t rvm)" = "function" ] || source ~/.rvm/scripts/rvm fi 

3. Restart Terminall 4. Done!

rvm use 1.9.3 

Wil work