How to upgrade/downgrade Rubygems:

For RubyGems 1.5.0 and 1.5.1:

RubyGems 1.5.0 and 1.5.1 shipped with a broken gem update --system. You will need to use the Manual Upgrade Recipe below.

On Ruby 1.9.x:

From stock ruby shipping with 1.9:

Use the Normal Upgrade Method below. (finally!)

On Ruby 1.8.x:

From rubygems 1.3.x:

Use the Normal Upgrade Recipe below.

From rubygems 1-1.x through 1.2.x:

RubyGems 1.1 and 1.2 have problems upgrading when there is no rubygems-update installed. You will need to use the following instructions if you see “Nothing to update”.

Use the Manual Upgrade Recipe below.

From rubygems < 1.1.x:

Use the Normal Upgrade Recipe below.

Downgrade Recipe

Normal Downgrade

With rubygems 1.5.2 and higher:

$ gem update --system 1.3.7

With rubygems 1.5.1 and lower:

Use sudo/su as appropriate:

$ gem install rubygems-update -v 1.3.7
$ update_rubygems _1.3.7_

Replace 1.3.7 with whatever version you want to downgrade to. This recipe can also be used to upgrade to a specific version instead of the latest.

Do make sure that you don’t have any other versions of rubygems-update installed when you run the second command.

1.9.2 Downgrade from Rubygems 1.4.x+ to stock 1.9 rubygems:

Use sudo/su as appropriate:

$ ruby --disable-gems -S gem which rubygems
~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems.rb
$ rm ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems.rb
$ rm -rf ~/.rvm/rubies/ruby-1.9.2-p136/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.9.1/rubygems
$ gem -v
1.3.7

Upgrade Recipes

Normal Upgrade

Use sudo/su as appropriate:

$ gem update --system

Manual Upgrade

If you have an older version of RubyGems installed, then you can still do it in two steps:

Use sudo/su as appropriate:

$ gem install rubygems-update
$ update_rubygems

Manual Install

If you don’t have any RubyGems install, there is still the pre-gem approach to getting software, doing it manually:

Use sudo/su as appropriate:

• Download from: https://rubygems.org/pages/download
• Unpack into a directory and cd there
• Install with: ruby setup.rb