How To Install Ruby on Rails on Ubuntu & LinuxMint using RVM

ROR is a short form of Ruby on Rails. Ruby is a programming language, which is becoming more popular these days where Rails is the framework to run ruby. Ruby language was created by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto and first published in 1995. This article will help you to install ruby on rails on Ubuntu 15.10, 115.04, 14.04 LTS and 12.04 LTS & Linuxmint Systems using RVM. For this article I am using Ubuntu 14.04. RVM provides easy set of commands to install single or multiple versions of Ruby on single server.

Step 1: Install RVM

RVM stands for Ruby Version Manager. Which provides efficient way to install and manage ruby version independently. Install latest stable version of RVM on your system using following command. This command will automatically download all required files and install on your system.

Install CURL

# apt-get install curl

Install RVM

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

# gpg2 --keyserver hkp://keys.gnupg.net --recv-keys 409B6B1796C275462A1703113804BB82D39DC0E3
# curl -sSL https://get.rvm.io | 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

Install Ruby Dependencies

Install all the dependencies for installing Ruby automatically on system using below command.

# rvm requirements

Step 2: List Available Ruby Versions

Now use following command to get a list of available ruby versions, which we can install on system. Install Ruby version of your choice (requirement ) in next step.

# 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[-p643]
[ruby-]2.1.4
[ruby-]2.1[.5]
[ruby-]2.2[.1]
[ruby-]2.2-head
ruby-head

Step 3: Install Ruby Version

RVM provides option to manage multiple ruby version on single system. Use following command to install required version of Ruby. As below example we are installing Ruby 2.2.4 on our system.

# rvm install 2.2.4

[Sample Output]

Searching for binary rubies, this might take some time.
Found remote file https://rubies.travis-ci.org/ubuntu/14.04/x86_64/ruby-2.2.4.tar.bz2
Checking requirements for ubuntu.
Requirements installation successful.
ruby-2.2.4 - #configure
ruby-2.2.4 - #download
  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
  0     0    0     0    0     0      0      0 --:--:--  0:00:01 --:--:--     0
100 22.9M  100 22.9M    0     0   456k      0  0:00:51  0:00:51 --:--:--  488k
No checksum for downloaded archive, recording checksum in user configuration.
ruby-2.2.4 - #validate archive
ruby-2.2.4 - #extract
ruby-2.2.4 - #validate binary
ruby-2.2.4 - #setup
ruby-2.2.4 - #gemset created [email protected]
ruby-2.2.4 - #importing gemset /usr/local/rvm/gemsets/global.gems................................
ruby-2.2.4 - #generating global wrappers........
ruby-2.2.4 - #gemset created /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.4
ruby-2.2.4 - #importing gemsetfile /usr/local/rvm/gemsets/default.gems evaluated to empty gem list
ruby-2.2.4 - #generating default wrappers........

Step 4: Setup Default Ruby Version

Use rvm command to set up default ruby version to be used by applications. You may also install multiple versions of ruby using above step command and select which version you want to use.

# rvm use 2.2.4 --default 

Using /usr/local/rvm/gems/ruby-2.2.4

Step 5: Check Ruby Version

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

# ruby --version

ruby 2.2.4p230 (2015-12-16 revision 53155) [x86_64-linux]

Step 6: Install Rails

We can install latest stable release version of Rails by running 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=4.2.5

I hope above steps will help you for installing multiple Ruby version using RVM and Rails versions.