What is the purpose of /usr/lib/vendor_ruby

Question

I have been working through an issue with CANVAS LMS where what appears to be a stale version of ruby existed in /usr/lib/vendor_ruby.

When I removed the /usr/lib/vendor_ruby/rails and /usr/lib/vendor_ruby/rails.rb files, the issue with Canvas disappeared.

What is the purpose of the /usr/lib/vendor_ruby directory?

I am running ruby 1.9.3 on Ubuntu 13.04, and have upgraded from 1.8.7.

Can I safely remove the entire /usr/lib/vendor_ruby directory?

Thanks. Don

Answer 1

According to this excerpt from The Ruby Programming Language book, the vendor_ruby directory is intended for customizations provided by the OS vendor. In my personal experience it is safe to remove, and doing so can (like probably also in your case) resolve conflicts with Gems installed into the other directories.