How To Install Ruby Lang on Debian Linux

Ruby is a popular programming language among a large number of developers. Rails are the framework to run ruby language. Ruby language was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto and first published in 1995. This article will help you to install ruby on rails on Debian Linux systems using RVM. RVM is the Ruby Version Manager helps for installing and managing Ruby language similar to NVM for Node.js.

Step 1 – Prerequisites

Login to your Debian system using GUI or use ssh for remote hosts. Then install some pre-required packages.

sudo apt update 
sudo apt install curl gnupg2 

Step 2 – Install RVM

Before installing RVM first we need to import public key in our system then use curl to install rvm in our system.

curl -sSL https://rvm.io/mpapis.asc | sudo gpg2 --import - 
curl -sSL https://rvm.io/pkuczynski.asc | sudo gpg2 --import - 
curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | sudo bash -s stable 

After installing RVM first we need to set up rvm environment using below command. so that current shell takes new environment settings.

source /etc/profile.d/rvm.sh 

After this, install all the dependencies for installing Ruby automatically on the system. Run below command on terminal.

rvm requirements 

Step 3 – List Available Ruby Versions

Get a list of available versions of Ruby language. You can install any version of your choice or requirements showing on the list.

rvm list known 

[ruby-]1.8.6[-p420]
[ruby-]1.8.7[-head] # security released on head
[ruby-]1.9.1[-p431]
[ruby-]1.9.2[-p330]
[ruby-]1.9.3[-p551]
[ruby-]2.0.0[-p648]
[ruby-]2.1[.10]
[ruby-]2.2[.10]
[ruby-]2.3[.8]
[ruby-]2.4[.10]
[ruby-]2.5[.8]
[ruby-]2.6[.6]
[ruby-]2.7[.2]
[ruby-]3[.0.0]
ruby-head

Step 4 – Install Ruby on Debian

RVM is useful for installation of multiple Ruby versions on the single system. Use the following command to install required Ruby on your system. As shown below example will install latest Ruby version on Debian system.

rvm install ruby 

Step 5 – Setup Default Ruby Version

Use rvm command to set up default ruby version to be used by applications. You can install multiple versions as defined in the above step. Now select which version you want to use.

rvm use 3.0 --default 

Using /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-3.0.0

Step 6 – Check Ruby Version

Using following command you can check the current ruby version is used.

ruby --version  

ruby 3.0.0p0 (2020-12-25 revision 95aff21468) [x86_64-linux]

Step 7 – Install Rails

You can install the latest stable release version of Rails by running the following command. It will install Rails in global gemset So that all applications share the same version of Rails.

gem install rails 
rails -v 

Or we can get a specific version of Rails by defining --version during installation. Visit here to get available rails versions.

gem install rails --version=5.2.3 

Congratulation’s, You have successfully installed Ruby on your system. Read our next articles to deploy Ruby with Apache or Ruby with Nginx web server with simple steps.