One of my frustrations as a casual Rubyist is trying to use some of these wonderful CPAN-like things that have appeared since I began playing with Ruby after the Hunt and Thomas article in Dr. Dobb’s. For example, gems.

The problem with Ruby (and especially rubygems) is that they don’t play nicely with the other package management tools on your system. (Ubuntu/Debian’s .deb‘s and MacPorts‘ ports). And I’m too stupid and lazy to bypass all that and go back to using tarballs and stashing everything in /usr/local.

Enter RVM, the Ruby Version Manager. It bypasses your system’s package management system. It creates a hidden folder ($HOME/.rvm) and puts whatever Ruby versions (and gems, etc.) there. But it does it all so cleverly you don’t realize what’s going on in the background. I like it.