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marinnen128
Asked: 2020-01-28 16:32:47 +0800 CST

Problem with accessing an installed ruby gem package from a shell script under Ubuntu 16.04

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I used snap to install the latest version of ruby under Ubuntu 16.04

$ sudo snap install ruby --classic
$ which ruby
/snap/bin/ruby
$ ruby -v
ruby 2.7.0p0 (2019-12-25 revision 647ee6f091) [x86_64-linux]

Then I installed a ruby gem pdfbeads (a PDF creation utility program)

sudo gem install pdfbeads

This command installs the utility in my home directory as ~/.gem/gems/pdfbeads-1.1.1/bin/pdfbeads. However, when I try to use this program within a shell script that converts DJVU files into PDF format, I get the following error message

djvu2pdf.sh: line 43: pdfbeads: command not found

While ruby linked in /snap/bin/ is in my $PATH by default, ~/.gem/ is not. Here's the gem environment after installation of pdfbeads:

$ gem environment
RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 3.1.2
  - RUBY VERSION: 2.7.0 (2019-12-25 patchlevel 0) [x86_64-linux]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: ~/.gem
  - USER INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: ~/.gem/ruby/2.7.0
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /snap/bin/ruby
  - GIT EXECUTABLE: /usr/bin/git
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: ~/.gem/bin
  - SPEC CACHE DIRECTORY: ~/.gem/specs
  - SYSTEM CONFIGURATION DIRECTORY: //etc
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-linux
  - GEM PATHS:
     - ~/.gem
     - /snap/ruby/172/lib/ruby/gems/2.7.0
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - https://rubygems.org/
  - SHELL PATH:
     - /usr/local/sbin
     - /usr/local/bin
     - /usr/sbin
     - /usr/bin
     - /sbin
     - /bin
     - /usr/games
     - /usr/local/games
     - /snap/bin

I would have expected that the gem package installation should have taken care of the path issue, but that's not apparently the case - pdfbeads is not in the execution directory path.

Clearly, I could add this one specific directory ~/.gem/gems/pdfbeads-1.1.1/bin/ to my $PATH to solve this particular problem. However, as this is my first use of ruby, I'm looking for a more general solution that would not require doing the same every time I install another ruby gem.

I've got a question for all the ruby experts - is there some standard, more elegant way of resolving this issue that would also cover any future gem installations?

ruby paths gem 16.04

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Gem binaries are also created in ~/.gem/bin, so you can add that single directory to your path to have access to all installed gems.

    • 2