# Using a Gem in your App without installing to the system

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [March 26, 2006, 1:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225 "2006-03-26T01:21:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danhobbs)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 1:21am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225/1 "2006-03-26T01:21:48Z")

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Does anyone know how to use a gem without installing it to the rails  
installation? For example, I can download the Money gem package from  
[http://dist.leetsoft.com/](http://dist.leetsoft.com/) but if I don’t have the ability to install a  
gem at my hosting provider, how can I use the gem in my app?

Cheers,  
Dan

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**Author:** ![danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danhobbs)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 1:29am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225/2 "2006-03-26T01:29:20Z")

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Just put the ruby files ofthe Money gem into the lib folder of your  
rails  
app.

there exists even a thirdparty rake task for that (but which did not  
work  
propoperly for me on windows) , just google for the topfunky blog

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**Author:** ![danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danhobbs)\
**Post date:** [March 26, 2006, 4:13am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225/3 "2006-03-26T04:13:02Z")

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On Saturday, March 25, 2006, at 9:29 PM, Roberto S. wrote:

> Just put the ruby files ofthe Money gem into the lib folder of your rails  
> app.
> 
> there exists even a thirdparty rake task for that (but which did not work  
> propoperly for me on windows) , just google for the topfunky blog

I’ve also written a rake task for this (which should work on win32 as  
well).

[http://locomotive.raaum.org/home/show/Freeze](http://locomotive.raaum.org/home/show/Freeze)

(I wrote it for people using my Mac Locomotive application - but it’s  
not specific to Locomotive or Mac in any way).

-r

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**Author:** ![danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/d/a5b964/32.png) [@danhobbs](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/danhobbs)\
**Post date:** [March 29, 2006, 6:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/using-a-gem-in-your-app-without-installing-to-the-system/87225/4 "2006-03-29T18:44:20Z")

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Ryan R. wrote:

> [http://locomotive.raaum.org/home/show/Freeze](http://locomotive.raaum.org/home/show/Freeze)
> 
> (I wrote it for people using my Mac Locomotive application - but it’s  
> not specific to Locomotive or Mac in any way).

Thank you!

On DreamHost I found that Dir::tmpdir didn’t exist (checked in irb, and  
it really didn’t), so I made a tmp directory and hard-coded the tmp\_dir  
to refer to it. Then it worked fine.

Justin