How to Check If a Gem Is Installed

How to check if a gem is installed?

General solution

To get the full list of gems that are installed:

gem list

To test for a particular gem, you can use -i with a regex:

gem list -i "^gem_name$"

(Credit to Timo in the comments for this technique.)

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Specific solution for OP

If you can't find data_mapper, it may be that the gem name is different from what you expect.

Also, if you're just doing which brew to find brew, you aren't finding the gem called brew, you're finding the location of the brew executable. Try gem which brew instead.

If you're looking for data_mapper by doing which data_mapper, you probably won't find it. which is a unix program for finding unix executables, and data_mapper probably doesn't have one.

Since your goal is to verify a gem is installed with the correct version, use gem list. You can limit to the specific gem by using gem list data_mapper.

To verify that it's installed and working, you'll have to try to require the gem and then use it in your code.

programmatically determine if a certain gem is installed, then install it if not

# The version requirements are optional.
# You can also specify multiple version requirements, just append more at the end
gem_name, *gem_ver_reqs = 'json', '~> 1.8.0'
gdep = Gem::Dependency.new(gem_name, *gem_ver_reqs)
# find latest that satisifies
found_gspec = gdep.matching_specs.max_by(&:version)
# instead of using Gem::Dependency, you can also do:
# Gem::Specification.find_all_by_name(gem_name, *gem_ver_reqs)

if found_gspec
  puts "Requirement '#{gdep}' already satisfied by #{found_gspec.name}-#{found_gspec.version}"
else
  puts "Requirement '#{gdep}' not satisfied; installing..."
  # reqs_string will be in the format: "> 1.0, < 1.2"
  reqs_string = gdep.requirements_list.join(', ')
  # multi-arg is safer, to avoid injection attacks
  system('gem', 'install', gem_name, '-v', reqs_string)
end

More recent rubygems versions provide an installer API, so instead of shelling out to the gem command you could also use:

# using the same "gdep" variable as above
Gem.install gem_name, gdep.requirement

However, I'm not sure if Gem.install respects your .gemrc file.

There are a lot of useful methods for querying your installed gems (see rdocs). Some that might be helpful:

• Gem::Specification.find_all_by_name
• Gem::Requirement#satisfied_by?(gem_version_instance)
• Gem::Specification#satisfies_requirement?(gem_dependency_instance)
• Gem.loaded_specs - hash of the gems you've actually loaded via the gem method, or by require

List of installed gems?

The Gem command is included with Ruby 1.9+ now, and is a standard addition to Ruby pre-1.9.

require 'rubygems'

name = /^/i
dep = Gem::Dependency.new(name, Gem::Requirement.default)
specs = Gem.source_index.search(dep)
puts specs[0..5].map{ |s| "#{s.name} #{s.version}" }
# >> Platform 0.4.0
# >> abstract 1.0.0
# >> actionmailer 3.0.5
# >> actionpack 3.0.5
# >> activemodel 3.0.5
# >> activerecord 3.0.5

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Here's an updated way to get a list:

require 'rubygems'

def local_gems
   Gem::Specification.sort_by{ |g| [g.name.downcase, g.version] }.group_by{ |g| g.name }
end

Because local_gems relies on group_by, it returns a hash of the gems, where the key is the gem's name, and the value is an array of the gem specifications. The value is an array of the instances of that gem that is installed, sorted by the version number.

That makes it possible to do things like:

my_local_gems = local_gems()

my_local_gems['actionmailer']
# => [Gem::Specification.new do |s|
#       s.authors = ["David Heinemeier Hansson"]
#       s.date = Time.utc(2013, 12, 3)
#       s.dependencies = [Gem::Dependency.new("actionpack",
#         Gem::Requirement.new(["= 4.0.2"]),
#         :runtime),
#        Gem::Dependency.new("mail",
#         Gem::Requirement.new(["~> 2.5.4"]),
#         :runtime)]
#       s.description = "Email on Rails. Compose, deliver, receive, and test emails using the familiar controller/view pattern. First-class support for multipart email and attachments."
#       s.email = "david@loudthinking.com"
#       s.homepage = "http://www.rubyonrails.org"
#       s.licenses = ["MIT"]
#       s.name = "actionmailer"
#       s.require_paths = ["lib"]
#       s.required_ruby_version = Gem::Requirement.new([">= 1.9.3"])
#       s.requirements = ["none"]
#       s.rubygems_version = "2.0.14"
#       s.specification_version = 4
#       s.summary = "Email composition, delivery, and receiving framework (part of Rails)."
#       s.version = Gem::Version.new("4.0.2")
#       end]

And:

puts my_local_gems.map{ |name, specs| 
  [ 
    name,
    specs.map{ |spec| spec.version.to_s }.join(',')
  ].join(' ') 
}
# >> actionmailer 4.0.2
...
# >> arel 4.0.1,5.0.0
...
# >> ZenTest 4.9.5
# >> zucker 13.1

The last example is similar to the gem query --local command-line, only you have access to all the information for a particular gem's specification.

How to find where gem files are installed

Use gem environment to find out about your gem environment:

RubyGems Environment:
  - RUBYGEMS VERSION: 2.1.5
  - RUBY VERSION: 2.0.0 (2013-06-27 patchlevel 247) [x86_64-darwin12.4.0]
  - INSTALLATION DIRECTORY: /Users/ttm/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0
  - RUBY EXECUTABLE: /Users/ttm/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin/ruby
  - EXECUTABLE DIRECTORY: /Users/ttm/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin
  - SPEC CACHE DIRECTORY: /Users/ttm/.gem/specs
  - RUBYGEMS PLATFORMS:
    - ruby
    - x86_64-darwin-12
  - GEM PATHS:
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/lib/ruby/gems/2.0.0
     - /Users/ttm/.gem/ruby/2.0.0
  - GEM CONFIGURATION:
     - :update_sources => true
     - :verbose => true
     - :backtrace => false
     - :bulk_threshold => 1000
  - REMOTE SOURCES:
     - https://rubygems.org/
  - SHELL PATH:
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/versions/2.0.0-p247/bin
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/libexec
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build/bin
     - /Users/ttm/perl5/perlbrew/bin
     - /Users/ttm/perl5/perlbrew/perls/perl-5.18.1/bin
     - /Users/ttm/.pyenv/shims
     - /Users/ttm/.pyenv/bin
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/shims
     - /Users/ttm/.rbenv/bin
     - /Users/ttm/bin
     - /usr/local/mysql-5.6.12-osx10.7-x86_64/bin
     - /Users/ttm/libsmi/bin
     - /usr/local/bin
     - /usr/bin
     - /bin
     - /usr/sbin
     - /sbin
     - /usr/local/bin

Notice the two sections for:

• INSTALLATION DIRECTORY
• GEM PATHS

How to tell which version of a gem a rails app is using

In Rails 3 and Rails 4, use bundle show

In Rails 2, rake gems will print out what gems, dependencies, and versions are installed, frozen, etc.

How does Homebrew check for installed gems?

The actual check that is run to detect installed gems and similar things is in /usr/local/Library/Homebrew/requirements/language_module_dependency.rb, which in the case of Ruby does:

/usr/bin/env ruby -rubygems -e require\ 'GEMNAME'

Note that this calls ruby from the path, so it could be affected by mixups there. Make sure you have the right ruby first in your path, have the right gem program that goes with ruby, and possibly add some debugging to your formula to see what environment it is running under.

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