# Migrating my ruby gems

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/migrating-my-ruby-gems/74419>\
**Category:** Ruby\
**Created:** [November 6, 2006, 5:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/migrating-my-ruby-gems/74419 "2006-11-06T17:39:43Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bitsmith)\
**Post date:** [November 6, 2006, 5:39pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/migrating-my-ruby-gems/74419/1 "2006-11-06T17:39:43Z")

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…i would like to upgrade to 1.8.5.1…but my large gem collection are  
preventing…i have so many gems stored into my 1.8.2. Windows directory  
structure …is there a quick way to do this???

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**Author:** ![bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bitsmith)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:07am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/migrating-my-ruby-gems/74419/2 "2006-11-07T11:07:14Z")

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On 11/6/06, Dave R. [removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid](mailto:removed_email_address@domain.invalid) wrote:

> …i would like to upgrade to 1.8.5.1…but my large gem collection are  
> preventing…i have so many gems stored into my 1.8.2. Windows directory  
> structure …is there a quick way to do this???

I do:

rename c:\ruby to c:\ruby-182  
install 1.8.5 into c:\ruby

then go to C:\ruby-182\lib\ruby\gems\1.8\cache and do  
gem install \*.gem

I suppose there will be problems with dependencies (order of  
installation), so if anything fails, I install the gems individually.

Then I’d do global update and remove older no more needed gems.

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**Author:** ![bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/b/9de053/32.png) [@bitsmith](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/bitsmith)\
**Post date:** [November 7, 2006, 11:08am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/migrating-my-ruby-gems/74419/3 "2006-11-07T11:08:25Z")

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Dave R. wrote:

> …i would like to upgrade to 1.8.5.1…but my large gem collection are  
> preventing…i have so many gems stored into my 1.8.2. Windows directory  
> structure …is there a quick way to do this???

Back up the 1.8.2 folder, copying over the lib/ruby/gems directory from  
the backup to the fresh 1.8.5 install, gem update, gem clean. If  
rubygems is at least halfways worth its salt as a package manager (which  
I hope it does), it should recuperate from that. Futzing with them  
manually hopefully won’t be required.

David V.