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xanderxfz edited this page Jan 22, 2015 · 29 revisions

rbenv is a tool for simple Ruby version management.

To install rbenv, please refer to the Readme.

Troubleshooting / FAQ

How is this better than RVM?

See Why rbenv?

What is allowed in a .ruby-version file?

The string read from a .ruby-version file must match the name of an existing directory in ~/.rbenv/versions/. You can see the list of installed Ruby versions with rbenv versions.

If you're using ruby-build, typically this will be one of its Ruby version names.

Other version managers might allow fuzzy version matching on the string read from .ruby-version file, e.g. they might allow "1.9.3" (without patch suffix) to match the latest Ruby 1.9.3 release. rbenv will not support this, because such behavior is unpredictable and therefore harmful.

How to verify that I have set up rbenv correctly?

  1. Check that rbenv is in your PATH:

    which rbenv

  2. Check that rbenv's shims directory is in PATH:

    echo $PATH | grep --color=auto "$(rbenv root)/shims"

    If not, see the rbenv init step in installation instructions.

rbenv is installed but things just aren't working for me!

Please search existing issues and open a new one if you can't find any answers. Here's a script that dumps information about your current environment; you can use Gist to paste it online and share the URL to it in your bug report:

curl -s https://gist.githubusercontent.com/mislav/4728286/raw/rbenv-doctor.sh | bash -x 2>&1

Which shell startup file do I put rbenv config in?

Typically it's one of the following:

  • bash: ~/.bash_profile (or ~/.bashrc on Ubuntu Desktop)
  • zsh: ~/.zshrc
  • fish: ~/.config/fish/config.fish
  • other: ~/.profile

See Unix shell initialization for more info about how config files get loaded.

/dev/fd error under Docker or FreeBSD

ERROR: rbenv/libexec/rbenv-version-file-read:
line 23: /dev/fd/62: No such file or directory

Under Linux, the fix tends to be ensuring that udev is running. Or manually, doing the following:

sudo ln -s /proc/self/fd /dev/fd

Under Docker, add this to your Dockerfile:

RUN ln -s /proc/self/fd /dev/fd

Under FreeBSD, doing the following:

sudo mount -t fdescfs fdescfs /dev/fd
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