# Gem vs. other package managers

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [January 17, 2007, 1:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050 "2007-01-17T01:04:12Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joe)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2007, 1:04am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050/1 "2007-01-17T01:04:12Z")

</div>

Hi,

I’m trying to get rails set up on a newly built Gentoo box. I’ve seen  
some conflicting opinions on this around the web and I am now not sure  
what to do. Is it better to use rubygems or your OS’s package manager  
(emerge in my case) to manange things such as MySQL, Lighttpd, and  
Rails? Does it matter which one you choose?

Also, the book I’m reading suggests to do development with Webrick. If  
I’m planning on eventually launching my site, would I be better off  
using something like Lighttpd for development or is Webrick ok?

Thanks,  
Joe

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joe)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2007, 1:30am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050/2 "2007-01-17T01:30:26Z")

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On Jan 16, 2007, at 7:04 PM, Joe wrote:

> I’m trying to get rails set up on a newly built Gentoo box. I’ve  
> seen some conflicting opinions on this around the web and I am now  
> not sure what to do. Is it better to use rubygems or your OS’s  
> package manager (emerge in my case) to manange things such as  
> MySQL, Lighttpd, and Rails? Does it matter which one you choose?

These are orthogonal issues – RubyGems is a package manager for ruby  
libraries and nothing more. You might use your OS’s package manager  
to install MySQL, Lighty, etc., or you might install from source, but  
you couldn’t use RubyGems to do this. You’d use RubyGems to install  
the ruby bindings for MySQL, etc.

-faisal

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joe)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2007, 1:37pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050/3 "2007-01-17T13:37:12Z")

</div>

> These are orthogonal issues – RubyGems is a package manager for ruby  
> libraries and nothing more. You might use your OS’s package manager  
> to install MySQL, Lighty, etc., or you might install from source, but  
> you couldn’t use RubyGems to do this. You’d use RubyGems to install  
> the ruby bindings for MySQL, etc.
> 
> -faisal

That’s not completely true because most distributions try to repackage  
gems. The point of a the distribution package handlers is to know what  
all non-data files are and manage them.

Regardless of that I’d recomend using gems. Most of the ruby libraries  
are fast moving targets that the distribution packagers can’t really  
keep up with. You also loose the extras that gems offer.

Personally I use Debian/Ubuntu and no matter if I use ruby from the  
distribution packages or install it from source I install rubygems in  
/usr/local. The package manager will ignore everything in /usr/local  
and gems.

---

<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/j/b9e5f3/32.png) [@joe](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/joe)\
**Post date:** [January 17, 2007, 1:53pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/gem-vs-other-package-managers/82050/4 "2007-01-17T13:53:22Z")

</div>

> > These are orthogonal issues – RubyGems is a package manager for  
> > ruby  
> > libraries and nothing more. You might use your OS’s package manager  
> > to install MySQL, Lighty, etc., or you might install from source,  
> > but  
> > you couldn’t use RubyGems to do this. You’d use RubyGems to install  
> > the ruby bindings for MySQL, etc.
> 
> Regardless of that I’d recomend using gems. Most of the ruby  
> libraries  
> are fast moving targets that the distribution packagers can’t really  
> keep up with. You also loose the extras that gems offer.

I concur from experience with Gentoo Linux. Some packages are literally  
months behind. It took a long time for Rails 1.1 to go stable, and it  
wasn’t until two weeks or so that RMagick was still at 1.11. And that’s  
just two examples.

What I find problematic as well is that some gems may be in the  
distribution packaging, and others like Mongrel will be missing. It  
would be quite a mix-up if I were to use both Portage and RubyGems to  
manage Ruby packages, so I just “emerge” Ruby and RubyGems and then  
proceed to use RubyGems to manage the rest of the shebang.

I found the FreeBSD ports to be far more up-to-date, but as always YMMV.

Regards,

Roderick

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