Install a Ruby version manager

It is possible to install Ruby itself as a standalone package, but this creates a small problem: It common to have multiple projects that require different versions of Ruby.

To the rescue rbenv

You can install rbenv by running

$ brew install rbenv

We’re not done though!

We still need to do two things:

1. Configure your shell to work with rbenv
2. Install a version of Ruby

rbenv init

In order to make $ ruby do different things depending on what directory you are in rbenv provides a command that outputs autogenerated bash code.

Have a look yourself! - $ rbenv init -

This is great but you will want to get bash to execute that code, in your current session.

There is a man page for bash builtins man builtins, you can also find zsh builtin extensions in man zshbuiltins.

For now we’re only interested in eval, which comes from the core bash builtins.

Combining eval with another command

$ eval "$(rbenv init -)"

You don’t need to fully understand this yet, but to break it down:

• The parenthesis creates a subshell to run a command
• The $ does Command Expansion, which will turn the output of the subshell from output into literal commands
• The double-quotes will convert the output of the expanded subshell into a single parameter for eval

We’re not done yet!

Running $ eval "$(rbenv init -)" will work, but it isn’t persistent.

We want it to run automatically every time we restart our machines and open a Terminal.

There’s a useful file ~/.zshrc or ~/.bash_profile that contains commands that are run automatically.

Go ahead and add the command to the bottom of ~/.zshrc!

If you make changes to this file, you can reload it by running

$ source ~/.zshrc

Stop and understand

Phew! That was a lot.

• What does ~ mean in a path?
• What does source do? Is it a command or a builtin?

To Do

• Install rbenv
• Add rbenv to your zshrc file