How to tell rails to use non-default ruby?

Question

I need two different versions of ruby on a server. The packaged ruby for the packaged puppet to work, and a compiled ruby for a rails web app to work. So basically I want the default ruby to be the ruby from the package, and for rails to use the compiled ruby (in /usr/local/bin/ and /usr/local/lib/ )

I've found references to setting the RUBYPATH and RUBYLIB environment variables, but I'm confused as to where to set them. In .bashrc, .profile, in the apache config somewhere?

Answer 1

One trick would be to munge the PATH to include the one you want first. That is likely a hack though.

If you are using Rails 2.x (which I assume you are) you can specifically run things with a path there, such as:

/usr/local/bin/ruby script/server

(for development mode for example.)

If you are using something like Phusion Passenger, which I personally recommend, I think it can be set globally for the web server config. I am not certain if you can do it per-virtual-host using Passenger, but it doesn't sound like you need that.

Answer 2

I know this is an old thread, but incase anyone else is having this problem just install RVM (http://rvm.beginrescueend.com/) You can literally switch versions of ruby that the system uses like this (at the command line):

rvm 1.9.2
ruby -v  (will display ruby 1.9.2)

rvm 1.8.7 
ruby -v (will display ruby 1.8.7)

Simple, no problems!

B